








' 















I 



























































































UNCLE TOBY. 






W R K S 



OF 



LAURENCE STERNE. 



IN ONE VOLUME 



WITH 



A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR, 



WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. 



BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED BY D A R L E ?. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

CLAXTON, REMSEN & H A F FELF ING E R, 

624, 626 & 628 MARKET STREET. 

1873. 



£13 



BEQUEBT 



JHcmotrs 

OF THE 

LIFE AND FAMILY 

OF THE LATE 

REVEREND MR. LAURENCE STERNE, 

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. 



ROGER STERNE* (grandson to Arch- 
bishop Sterne) Lieutenant in Handaside's 
regiment, was married to Agnes Hebert, 
widow of a Captain of good family. Her 
family name was (I believe) Nuttle, though 
upon recollection, that was the name of her 
fr.ther-in-law, who was a noted sutler in 
Flanders, in Queen Anne's wars, where my 
father married his wife's daughter, (N. B. 
he was in debt to him), which was on Sep- 
tember 25, 1711, old style.— This Nuttle 
had a son by my grandmother, — a fine per- 
son of a man, but a graceless whelp!— what 
became of him I know not.— The family (if 
any left) live now at Clonmel, in the south 
of Ireland ; at which town 1 was born, No- 
vember 24, 1713, a few days after my mo- 
ther arrived from Dunkirk.— My birth-day 



* Mr. Sterne was descended from a family of that 
name in Suffolk, one of which settled in Nottingham- 
shire. The following genealogy is' extracted from 
Thoresby's Ducatus Leodinensis, p. 215. 



SIMON STERNE, of Mansfield 

1 




Dr. Richard S'eme.«= Eliz.beth. daughter 
Archl-ishopof York, 1 of Mr. I)ickin»on, 
ob. June 16S3. ob. 1610. 


|l |2 |3 

Richard Ster '«, William S'erne, Sim^n Sterne." 
of York an i of Mansfield. oi E vmK'on 
KiUiixr'nn, and Halifax. 
Esq. 1700. ob. 1703. 


= Marv daueh»er & 
leiress <f Riger 
J..qufs. nf Elving. 
toil, near York. 


| 1 12 1 3 | 4 
Richard. ROGER. Jaqin-z. LL.D. Mary. E 

ob. 1 759. 
Richard. | 


|ft |6 
izaleth. Frances. 



I 

LAURENCE STERNE. 

The arms of the family, says Guillam, in his book of 
Heraldry, p. 77, are, Or, a chevron between three crosses 
lory, sable. The crest, on a wreath of his colors, a 

tarlivg proper. 
Trifling circumstances are worthy of notice, when 
'.onnected with distinguished characters. The arms 
!)f Mr. Sterne's family are no otherwise important 
than on account of the crest having afforded a hint 
r or one of the finest stories in "The Sentimental 

ourney." 



was ominous to my poor father, who wa<s, 
the day of our arrival, with many othet 
brave officers, broke, and sent adrift into 
the wide world, with a wife and two chil- 
dren ; — the elder of which was Mary. SiV 
was born at Lisle, in French Flanders, July 
10, 1712, new style. — This child was the 
most unfortunate : — She married one Weo • 
mans, in Dublin, — who used her most un 
mercifully ; — spent his substance, became ? 
bankrupt, and left my poor sister to shift 
for herself; which she was able to do but 
for a few months, for she went to a friend's 
house in the country, and died of a broken 
heart. She was a most beautiful woman, — 
of a fine figure, and deserved a better fate. 
— The regiment in which my father served 
being broke, he left Ireland as soon as I was 
able to be carried with the rest of his family, 
and came to the family seat at Elvington, 
near York, where his mother lived. She 
was daughter to Sir Roger Jaques, and 
an heiress. There we sojourned for about 
ten months, when the regiment was estab- 
lished, and our household decamped with 
bag and baggage for Dublin. — Within a 
month of our arrival, my father left us, being 
ordered to Exeter ; where, in a sad winter, 
my mother and her two children followed 
him, travelling from Liverpool, by land, to 
Plymouth. — (Melancholy description of this 
journey, not necessary to be transmitted 
here.) — In twelve months we were all sent 
back to Dublin. — My mother, with three of 
us (for she lay-in at Plymouth of a boy, 
Joram) took ship at Bristol, for Ireland, and 
had a narrow escape from being cast away, 
by a leak springing up in the vessel. — At 
length after many perils and struggles we 
got to Dublin. There my father took a large 
house, furnished it, and in a year and a-half* 



IV 

time spent a grec b deal of money. — In the 
year one thousand seven hundred and nine- 
teen, all unhinged again ; the regiment was 
ordered, with many others, to the Isle of 
Wight, in order to embark for Spain in 
the Vigo expedition. We accompanied the 
regiment, and were driven into Milford- 
Haven, but landed at Bristol; fromlhence, 
by land, to Plymouth again, and to the Isle 
of Wight; — where, I remember, we staid 
encamped some time before the embarkation 
of the troops — (in this expedition, from 
Bristol to Hampshire, we lost poor Joram, 
— a pretty boy, four years old, of the small- 
pox) my mother, sister, and myself, re- 
mained at the Isle of Wight during the Vigo 
expedition, and until the regiment had got 
back to Wicklow, in Ireland ; from whence 
my father sent for us. — We had poor Joram's 
loss suj^p.ied, during our stay in the Isle of 
Wight, ')y the birth of a girl, Anne, born 
September the twenty-third, one thousand 
seven hundred and nineteen. — This pretty 
blossom fell at the age of three years, in the 
barracks of Dublin : — She was, as I well 
remember, of a fine delicate frame, not 
made to last long, — as were most of my 
father's babes. — We embarked for Dublin, 
and had all been cast away by a most vio- 
lent storm ; but through the intercessions 
of my mother, the captain was prevailed 
upon to turn back into Wales, where we 
staid a month, and at length got into Dub- 
lin, and travelled by land to Wicklow; 
where my father had for some weeks given 
us over for lost. — We lived in the barracks 
at Wicklow, one year — (one thousand seven 
hundred and twenty) when Devijeher (so 
called after Colonel Devijeher) was born ; 
from thence we decamped to stay half a 
year with Mr. Fetherston, a clergyman, 
about seven miles from Wicklow; who be- 
ing a relation of my mother's, invited us to 
his parsonage at Animo. — It was in this 
parish, during our stay, that I had that won- 
derful escape in falling through a mill-race 
whilst the mill was going, and of being 
taken up unhurt: the story is incredible, 
uut known for truth in al 1 that part of Ire- 
land, where hundreds of tne common people 
flocked ro see me. From hence we followed 
liie regiment to Dublin, where we lay in 
nc barracks ay°ar. In this year (one thou- 
w.nu seven hundred and twenty-one) I learnt 



MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE 

to write, &c. — The regiment ordered in 
twenty-two to Carrickfergus, in the .norm 

of I-~ ,u. We all decamped; but got n» 

further than Drogheda ; — thence ordered 
to Mullengar, forty miles west, where, by 
Providence, we stumbled upon a kind rela- 
tion, a collateral descendant from Arch- 
bishop Sterne, who took us all to his cas- 
tle, and kindly entertained us for a year, 
and sent us to the regiment at Carrick 
fergus, loaded with kindnesses, &c. A 
most rueful and tedious journey had we 
all (in March) to Carrickfergus, where we 
arrived in six or seven days. — Little Devi- 
jeher here died ; he was three years old : he 
had been left behind at nurse at a farm- 
house near W T icklow, but. was fetch'd to us 
by my father the summer afte/ : — another 
child sent to fill his place, Susan. This 
babe too left us behind in this weary jour- 
ney. The autumn of that year, or the 
spring afterwards (I forget which) my fa- 
ther got leave of his colonel to fix me at 
school, — which he did near Halifax, with 
an able master; with whom I staid some 
time, till by God's care of me, my cousin 
Sterne, of Elvington, became a father to me, 
and sent me to the university, &c. &c. — To 
pursue the thread of our story, my father's 
regiment was the year after ordered to Lon- 
donderry, where another sister was brought 
forth, Catherine, still living ; but most un- 
happily estranged from me by my uncle's 
wickedness and her cwn folly. From this 
station the regiment was sent to defend 
Gibraltar, at the siege, where my father 
was run through the body by Captain Phil- 
lips, in a duel (the quarrel began about a 
goose !) with much difficulty, he survived, 
though with an impaired constitution, which 
was not able to withstand the hardships it 
was put to; for he was sent to Jamaica, 
where he soon fell by the country fever, 
which took away his senses first, and made 
a child of him ; and then, in a month or two, 
walking about continually without com- 
plaining, till the moment he sat down in 
an arm-chair, and breathed his last, which 
was at Port Antonio, on the north of the 
island. My father was a little smart mam 
active to the last degree in all exercises, 
most patient of fatigue and disappointments, 
of which it pleased God to give him full 
measure. He was, in his temper, some 



OF THE REV. 

what rapid ant. hasty, but of a kindly sweet 
disposition, void of all design; and so inno- 
cent in his own intentions, that he suspected 
no one ; so that you might have cheated 
nini ten times in a Jay, if nine had not been 
sufficient for your purpose. My poor father 
died in March 1731. I remained at Halifax 
till about the latter end of that year, and 
cannot omit mentioning this anecdote of 
myself and schoolmaster. — He had the ceil- 
ing of the room new white-washed ; the 
ladder remained there : I one unlucky day 
mounted it, and wrote with a brush in large 
capital letters, LAU. STERNE, for which 
the usher severely whipped me. My mas- 
ter was very much hurt at this, and said be- 
fore me, that never should that name be 
effaced, for I was a boy of genius, and he 
was sure I should come to preferment. — 
This expression made me forget the stripes 
I had received. — In the year thirty-two* 
my cousin sent me to the university, where 
I staid some time. 'Twas there that I com- 
menced a friendship with Mr. H — , which 
has been lasting on both sides. — I then 
came to York, and my uncle got me the 
living of Sutton: and at York, I became ac- 
quainted with your mother, and courted her 
for two years: — she owned she liked me; 
but thought herself not rich enough, or me 
too poor, to be joined together. — She went 
to her sister's in S — ; and I wrote to her 
often. — I believe then she was partly de- 
termined to have me, but would not say so. — 
At her return she fen into a consumption ; — 
and one evening that I was sitting by her, 
with an almost broken heart to see her so 
ill, she said, "My dear Laurey, "I never 
" can be yoiw *br i verily believe I have 
" not long to live ! but I have left you every 
<; shilling: of my fortune." Upon that she 
showed ine her will. — This generosity over- 
powered me. — Tt pleased God that she re- 
covered, and I married her in the year 1741. 
My unclef and myself were then upon very 



* He wad admitted of Jesus' College, in the univer- 
sity of Cambridge, (ith July 1733, under the tuition of 
tflr Cannon. 

Matriculated 2Pth March 1735. 

Admitted to the degree of B. A. in January 1736. 

Admitted M. A. at the commencement of 1740. 

t Jaques Sterne, LL. D. He was Prebendary of 
Durham, Canon Residentiary, Precentor and Preben- 
dary of York, Hector of Rise, and Rector of Hornsea 
turn Riston both in the East Riding of the county of 
JTork. He died June Ulli, 1759. 



MR. STERNE. f 

good terms ; for he soon go- me me Prebend 
of York; but he quarrelled with me after- 
wards because I would not wriie paragraphs 
in the newspapers : — though he was a par- 
ty-man, I was not, and detested such dirty 
work : thinking it beneath me. From that 
period he became my bitterest enemy.* — 
By my wife's means I got the living of 
Still ington: a friend of hers in the south 
had promised her, that if she married a 
clergyman in Yorkshire, — when the living 
became vacant, he would make her a com- 
pliment of it. I remained near twenty 
years at Sutton, doing duty at both places. 
I had then very good health. Books,f paint- 
ing, fiddling, and shooting, were my amuse- 
ments. As to the Squire of the parish, I 
cannot say we were upon a very friendly 
footing : but at Stillington, the family of the 
C — s showed us every kindness: 'twas mo^t 
truly agreeable to be within a mile and a 
half of an amiable family, who were ever 
cordial friends. — In the year 1760 I took a 
house at York for your mother and yourself, 
and went up to London to publish J my two 
first volumes of Shandy. § In that year 
Lord Falconbridge presented me with the 
curacy of Coxwold ; a sweet retirement in 
comparison of Sutton. In sixty-two I went 



* It hath, however, been insinuated, that he for 
some time wrote a periodical electioneering paper at 
York, in defence of the Whig interest. — Monthly Re. 
view, vol. 53, p. 344. 

f A specimen of Mr. Sterne*s abilities in the art of 
designing, may be seen in Mr. Wodhul's poems, ovo. 
177:2. 

X The first edition was printed in the preceding year 
at York. 

§ The following is the order in which Mr. Sterne's 
publications appeared : 

1747. The Case of Elijah and the Widow of Zere 
phath considered, a Charity Sermon preached on 
Good-Friday, April 17, 1747, for the sopport of two 
charity-schools in York. 

1750. The Abuses of Conscience. Set forth in a Ser- 
mon preached in the cathedral church of St. Peter. 
York, at the summer assizes, before the lion Mr. Baron 
Clive, and the lion. Mr. Baron Smith} on Sunday, 
July -2), 1750. 

1759. Vol. 1 and 2 of Tristram Shandy. 

1760. Vol. 1 and 2 of Srmons. 

17(U. Vol. 3 and 4 of Tristram Shandy. 
17C2. Vol. 5 and ti of Tristram Shandy. 

1765. Vol. 7 and 8 of Tristram Shan.iy. 

1766. Vol. 3, 4, 5. and <> of Sermons. 

1767. Vol. 9 of Tristram Shan ly. 
17ti8. The Sentimental Journey. 

The remainder of his works were published afW bis 
death. 



vi MEMOIRS OF 

to France before the reace was concluded ; 
and you both folio wed me. I left you both 
in France, and in Wo years after, I went 
to Italy for the recovery of my health ; and, 
when I called upon you, I tried to engage 
your mother to return to England with me :* 
she and yourself are at leng th come, and I 
have had the inexpressible joy of seeing my 
girl every thing I wished her. 

I have set down these particulars relat- 
ing to my family and self for my Lydia 
in case hereafter she might have a curi- 
osity, or a kinder motive to know them. 



As Mr. Sterne, in the foregoing narra- 
tive, hath brought down the account of him- 
self until within a few months of his death, 
it remains only to mention that he left York 
about the end of the year 1767, and came 
to London, in order to publish The Senti- 
mental Journey, which he had written du- 
ring the preceding summer at his favourite 
living of Coxwold. His health had been 
for some time declining ; but he continued 
to visit his friends, and retained his usual 
flow of spirits. In February, 1768, he began 
to perceive the approaches of death; and 
with the concern of a good man, and the 
solicitude of an affectionate parent, devoted 
his attention to the future welfare of his 
daughter. His letters, at this period, reflect 
so much credit on his character, that it is to 
be lamented some others in the collection 



THE LIFE, &c. 

were permitted to see the light. Alter a 
short struggle with his disorder, his debili- 
tated and worn-out frame submitted to fate 
on the eighteenth day of March, 1768, at 
his lodgings in Bond-street. He was buried 
at the new burying-ground belonging to the 
parish of St. George, Hanover-square, on 
the 22d of the same month, in the most pri- 
vate manner ; and hath since been indebted 
to strangers for a monument very unworthy 
of his memory, on which the following lines 
are inscribed : — 

" Near to this Place 

Lies the Body of 

The Reverend Laurence Sterne, A. M 

Died September 13ih, 1768,* 

Aged 53 Years. 



Ah ! molliter ossa quiescant 



* From this passage it appears that the present ac- 
count of Mr. Sterne's Life ami Family was written 
■bout six months only before his death. 



If a sound Head, warm Heart, and Breast hu 

mane, 
Unsullied Worth, and Soul without a Stain : 
If Menial Pow'rs could ever justly claim 
The well-won Tribute of immortal Fame, 
Sterne was the man, who, with gigantic Stride, 
Mow'd down luxuriant Follies far and wide. 
Yet what tho' keenest Knowledge of Mankind 
Unseal'd to him the springs that move the Mind 
What did it cost him ? — Ridicul'd, abus'd, 
By Fools insulted, and by Prudes aecus'd ! 
In his, mild Reader, view thy future fate; 
Like him despise what 'twere a Sin to hate. 

This monumental Stone was erected by two 
brother masons ; for though he did not live to be a 
member of their society, yet, as his all-incompara- 
ble performances evidently prove him to have 
acted by rule and square, they rejoice in this op- 
portunity of perpetuating his high and irreproach 
able character to after-ages. W. & S." 



* It is scarcely necessary to observe, that this dau 
is erroneous. 



THE 

LIFE AND OPINIONS 

OF 

GENTLEMAN. 



CHAP. I. 

I WISH either my father or my mother, 
or indeed both "of them, as they were in 
duty both equally bound to it, had minded 
what they were about when they begot me: 
had they duly considered how much de- 
pended upon what they were then doing ; — 
that not only the production of a rational 
being was concerned in it, but that possibly 
the happy formation and temperature of his 
»ody, perhaps his genius, and the very cast 
of his mind ; and, for aught they knew to 
the contrary, even the fortunes of hv whole 
house, might take their turn from the hu- 
mors and dispositions which were then 
uppermost; — had they duly weighed and 
considered all this, and proceeded accord- 
ingly, — I am verily persuaded I should have 
made a quite different figure in the world 
from that in which the reader is likely to 
see me. — Believe me, good folks, this is not 
so inconsiderable a thing as many of you 
may think it; — you have all, I dare say, 
heard of the animal spirits, as how they are 
transfused from father to son, &c. &c. — 
and a great deal to that purpose: — well, 
you may take my word, that nine parts in 
ten of a man's sense, or his nonsense, his 
successes and miscarriages in this world, 
depend upon their motions and activity, and 
the different tracks and trains you put them 
into ; so that when they are once set a-going, 
whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny 
matter, — away they go cluttering like hey- 
go mad ; and by treading the same steps 
over and over again, they presently make 
a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a 
garden-walk, which when they are once 
used to, the devil himself sometimes shall 
not be able to drive them off it. 

Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have 
you not forgot to wind up the clock ?— — 



Good G — d! cried my father, making ari 
exclamation, but taking care to moderate 

his voice at the same time, Did ever 

woman, since the creation of the world 
interrupt a man with such a silly question ' 

Pray, what was your father saying? 

Nothinsr. 



chap, ii. 



Then, positively, there is nothing 

in the question that I can see, either good 

or bad. Then, let me tell you, Sir, \t 

was a very unseasonable question at least. — 
because it scattered and dispersed the ani- 
mal spirits, whose business it was to have 
escorted, and gone hand in hand with *he 
Homunculus, and conducted him safe to 
the place destined for his reception. 

The Homunculus, Sir, in however low 
and ludicrous a light he may appear, in this 
age of levity, to the eye of- folly or preju- 
dice; — to the eye of reason in scientific 
research, he stands confessed — a being 

guarded and circumscribed with rights. 

The minutest philosophers, who, by the 
bye, have the most enlarged understandings 
(their souls being inversely as their in- 
quiries) show us incontestably that the 
Homunculus is created by the same hand. — 
engendered in the same course of nature, — 
endowed with the same locomotive powers 
and faculties with us: — that he consists. ?is 
we do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, arte- 
ries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, 
marrow, brains, glands, genitals, humors, 
and articulations; — is a being of as much 
activity, — and, in all senses of the word, an 
much and as truly our fellow-creature as 
my Lord Chancellor of England. — He mnv 
be benefited, — he may be injured, lie may 
obtain redress; in a word, he has all mo 



8 LIFE AND OPINIONS 

claims and rights of humanity which Tully, 
Puffendorf, or the best ethic writers, allow 
to arise out of that btate and relation. 

Now, dear Sh. what if any accident had 
befallen him in his way alone ! — or that, 
through terror of it, natural to so young a 
traveller, my little gentleman had got to 
his journey's end miserably spent; — his 
muscular strength and virility worn down 
to a thread; — his own animal spirits ruffled 
beyond description, — and that in this sad 
disordered state of nerves, he had lain down 
a prey to sudden starts, or a series of mel- 
ancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long, 
iong months together, — I tremble to think 
what a foundation had been laid for a thou- 
sand weaknesses both of body and mind, 
which no skill of the physician or the phi- 
losopher could ever afterwards have set 
thoroughly to rights. 



CHAP. IV. 



CHAP. III. 



To my uncle, Mr. Toby Shandy, do I 
stand indebted for the preceding anecdote, 
to whom my father, who was an excellent 
natural philosopher, and much given to close 
reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft 
and heavily complained of the injury ; but 
once more particularly, as my uncle Toby 
well remembered, upon his observing a 
most unaccountable obliquity (as he called 
it) in my manner of setting up my top; and 
justifying the principles upon which I had 
done it, — the old gentleman shook his head, 
and in a tone more expressive by half of 
sorrow than reproach, he said his heart all 
along foreboded, and he saw it verified in 
this, and from a thousand other observations 
he had made upon me, that I should neither 
think nor act like any other man's child : — 
But alas ! continued he, shaking his head 
a second time, and wiping away a tear 
which was trickling down his cheeks, My 
Tristram's misfortunes began nine months 
before ever he came into the world ! 

- -My mother, who was sitting by, looked 
op; but she knew no more than her back- 
side what my father meant ; — but my uncle, 
Mr. Toby Shandy, who had been often in- 
formed of the affair. — understood him very 



I know there are readers in the world, as 
well as many other good people in it, who 
are no readers at all, — who find themselves 
ill at ease, unless they are let into the 
whole secret, from first to last, of every 
thing which concerns you. 

It is in pure compliance with this humor 
of theirs, and from a backwardness in my 
nature to disappoint any one soul living 
that I have been so very particular already. 
As my life and opinions are likely to make 
some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture 
right, will take in all ranks, professions, 
and denominations of men whatever, — be 
no less read than the Pilgrim's Progress 
itself, — and, in the end, prove the very thing 
which Montaigne dreaded his Essays should 
turn out, that is, a book for a parior-win- 
dow ; — I find it necessary to consult every 
one a little in his turn ; and therefore must 
beg pardon for going on a little farther in 
the same way : for which cause right glad 
I am that I have begun the history of my- 
self in the way I have done ; and that I am 
able to go on, tracing every thing in it, aa 
Horace says, ab ovo. 

Horace, I know, does not recommend this 
fashion altogether: but that gentleman is 
speaking only of an epic poem, or a tragedy 
(1 forgot which ;) — besides, if it was no* 
so, I should beg Mr. Horace's pardon ; — foi 
in writing what I have set about, I shall 
confine myself neither to his rules, nor to 
any man's rules that ever lived. 

To such, however, as do not choose to go 
so far back into these things, I can give no 
better advice than that they skip over the 
remaining part of this chapter; for I de- 
clare beforehand, 'tis wrote only for the 
curious and inquisitive. 

Shut the door. 1 was begot 

m the night betwixt the first Sunday and 
the first Monday in the month ef March, in 
the year of our Lord one thousand seven 
hundred and eighteen. I am positive I was. 
— But how I came to be so very particular 
in my account of a thing which happened 
before I was born, is owing to another small 
anecdote known only in our own family ; 
but now, made public for the better clearing 
up of this point. 

My father, von must know, who '»ag 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

•ng-.*«. r y a Turkey merchant, but had left 'most to a certainty. However, what fol 

off W*«ness for some years, in order to re- lows in the beginning of the next chapter 

tire to and die upon his paternal estate in puts it beyond all possibility of doubt. 

the county of , was, I believe, one of | But pray, Sir, what was your 

the most regular men in every thing he father doing all December, January, and 

did, whether it was matter of business or February? Why, Madam, — he was ail 

matter of amusement, that ever lived. As that time afflicted with a Sciatica, 
a small specimen of this extreme exactness 

ot nis, to which he was in truth a slave, he •=> 

had made it a rule tor many years of his 

life, — on the first Sunday night of every CHAP V 
month throughout the whole year, as cer- 
tain as ever the Sunday night came, — to On the fifth day of November, 1718, 
wind up a large house-clock, which we had which, to the era fixed on, was as near nine 
standing on the back-stairs head, with his calendar months as any husband could in 
own hands : and being somewhere between reason have expected, — was I, Tristram 
fifty and sixty years of age at the time I Shandy, gentleman, brought forth into this 

have been speaking of, he had likewise scurvy and disastrous world of ours. 1 

gradually brought some other little family wish I had been born in the moon, or in any 

concerns to the same period, in order, as he of the planets, (except Jupiter or Saturn, 

would often say to my uncle Toby, to get because I never could bear cold weather,) 

them all out of the way at one time, and be for it could not well have fared worse with 

no more plagued and pestered with them me in any of them (though I will not an- 

the rest of the month. |swer for Venus) than it has in this vile, 
It was attended but with one misfortune,' dirty planet of ours, — which, o' my con- 

which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, science, with reverence be it spoken, 1 take 

and the effects of which, I fear, I shall carry to be made up of the shreds and clippings 

with me to my grave; namely, that from of the rest; not but the planet is well 

an unhappy association of ideas, which have enough, provided a man could be born in it 

no connexion in nature, it so fell out at to a great title, or to a great estate; or 

length, that my poor mother could never could any how contrive to be called up to 

hear the said clock wound up, but the public charges and employments of dignity 

thoughts of some other things unavoidably or power ; but that is not my case ; 

popped into her head — et vice versa : and therefore every man will speak of the 

which strange combination of ideas, the fair as his own market has gone in it; 

sagacious Locke, who certainly understood for which cause, I affirm it over again to be 

the nature of these things better than most one of the vilest worlds that ever was 

men, affirms to have produced more wry made; — for I can „ruly say, that from the 

actions than all other sources of prejudice first hour I drew my breath in it, to this, 

that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an 
asthma 1 got in skating against the wind in 



whatsoever. 

But this by the bye 

Now it appears hy a memorandum in my Flanders, — I have been the continual sport 

father's pocket-book, which now lies upon j of what the world calls Fortune; and though 

I will not wrong her by saying, She has 
ever made me feel the weight of any great 

or signal evil ; yet, with all the good 

temper in the world, I affirm it of her, that 
in every stage of my life, and at every turn- 
and corner where she could get fairly at 
me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me 
with a set of as pitiful misadventures and 
cross-accidents as ever small Hero sustained 



the table, " That on Lady-day, which was 
on the 25th of the same month in which I 

date my geniture, my father set out 

upon his journey to London, with my eldest 
brother Bobby, to fix him at Westminster 
school ;*' and, as it appears from the same 
authority, "That he did not ge* down to 
bis wife and family till the second week in 
May, following," — it brings the thing al- 
B 



)0 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



CHAP. VI. 

In the beginning of the last chapter, I 
informed you exactly when I was born ; but 
I did not inform you how. No ; that par- 
ticular was reserved entirely for a chapter 
by itself; — besides, Sir, as you and I are in 
a manner perfect strangers to each other, it 
would not have been proper to have let you 
into too many circumstances relating to my- 
self all at once. — You must have a little 
patience. I have undertaken, you see, to 
write not only my life, but my opinions 
also; hoping and expecting that your know- 
ledge of my character, and of what kind of 
a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a 
better relish for the other. As you proceed 
farther with me, the slight acquaintance, 
which is now beginning betwixt us, will 
grow into familiarity ; and that, unless one 
of us is in fault, will terminate in friend- 
ship. — O diem prceclarum ! — then nothing 
which has touched me will be thought tri- 
fling in its nature, or tedious in its telling. 
Therefore, my dear friend and companion, 
if you should think me somewhat sparing 
of my narrative on my first setting out — 
bear with me — and let me go on and tell 
my story my own way: — or, if I should 
eeem now and then to trifle upon the road, — 
or should sometimes put on a fool's cap, 
with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we 
pass along, — don't fly off, — but rather cour- 
teously give me credit for a little more wis- 
dom than appears upon my outside ; — and, 
as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at 
me, or, in short, do any thing, — only keep 
your temper. 



CHAP. VII. 



In the same village where my father and 
my mother dwelt, dwelt also a thin, upright, 
motherly, notable, good old body of a mid- 
wife, who, with the help of a little plain 
4(ood sense, and some years' full employ- 
ment in her business, in which she had all 
along trusted little to her own efforts, and 
a great deal to those of dame Nature, — had 
acquired, in her way, no small degree of 
reputation in the world : — by which word 
world, need I in this place inform your wor- 



ship that I would be understood to mean nc 
more of it than a small circle described 
upon the circle of the great world, of four 
English miles diameter, or thereabouts, of 
which the cottage where the good old wo- 
man lived is supposed to be the centre 1 — 
She had been left, it seems, a wicow ir> 
great distress, with three or four small chil- 
dren, in her forty -seventh year; and as she 
was at that time a person of decent car- 
riage, — grave deportment, — a woman more- 
over of few words, and withal an object of 
compassion, whose distress, and silence un- 
der it, called out the louder for a friendly 
lift, — the wife of the parson of the parish 
was touched with pity ; and having often 
lamented an inconvenience to which her 
husband's flock had for many years been 
exposed, inasmuch as there was no such 
thing as a midwife, of any kind or degree, 
to be got at, let the case have been ever so 
urgent, within less than six or sev^n long 
miles' riding ; which said seven long miles 
in dark nights and dismal roads, the coun- 
try thereabouts being nothing but a deep 
clay, was almost equal to fourteen ; and that 
in effect was sometimes next to having no 
midwife at all, it came into her head that 
it would be doing as seasonable a kindness 
to the whole parish as to the poor creature 
herself, to get her a little instructed in 
some of the plain principles of the business, 
in order to set her up in it. As no woman 
thereabouts was better qualified to execute 
the plan she had formed than herself, the 
gentlewoman very charitably undertook it ; 
and having great influence over the female 
part of the parish, she found no difficulty in 
effecting it to the utmost of her wishes. In 
truth, the parson joined his interest with 
his wife's in the whole affair; and, in order 
to do things as they should be, and give the 
poor soul as good a title by law to practise, 
as his wife had given by institution, — he 
cheerfully paid the fees for the ordinary's 
license himself, amounting in the whole to 
the sum of eighteen shillings and four- 
pence; so that, betwixt them both, the good 
woman was fully invested in the real and 
corporal possession of her office, together 
with all its rights, members, and apjmr 
tenances whatsoever. 

These last words, you must know, wen? 
not according to the old rorm in whict such 



OF TR STRAM SHANDY. 



H 



licenses, facuMies and powers usually ran, 
Which, in like cases, had heretofore been 
granted to the sisterhood ; but it was ac- 
cording to a ne:i.t formula of Didius his own 
devising, who having a particular turn for 
taking to pieces and new-framing over again 
all kinds of instruments in that way, not 
only hit upon this dainty amendment, but 
coaxed many of the old licensed matrons in 
the neighborhood to open their faculties 
afresh, in order to have this whimwham of 
his inserted. 

I own I never could envy Didius in these 
kinds of fancies of his : — but every man to 
his own taste. — Did not Dr. Kunastrokius, 
that great man, at his leisure hours, take 
the greatest delight imaginable in combing 
of asses' tails, and plucking the dead hairs 
out with his teeth, though he had tweezers 
always in his pocket? Nay, if you come to 
that, Sir, have not the wisest of men in all 
ages, not excepting Solomon himself, — have 
they not had their Hobby-Horses, — their 
running horses, — their coins and their 
cockle-shells, their drums and their trum- 
pets, their fiddles, their pallets, their mag- 
gots, and their butterflies ! — and so long as 
a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably 
and quietly along the King's highway, and 
neither compels you nor me to get up behind 
him, — pray, Sir, what have either you or I 
to do with it { 



CHAP. VIII. 

— De gustibus non est disputandum ; — 
tnat is, there is no disputing against Hobby- 
Horses ; and for my part I seldom do ; nor 
could I with any sort of grace, had I been 
an enemy to them at the bottom ; for hap- 
pening, at certain intervals and changes of 
the moon, to be both fiddler' and painter, 
according as the fly stings, — be it known 
to you, that I keep a couple of pads myself, 
upon which, in their turns, (nor do I care 
who knows it,) I frequently ride out and 
take the air; though sometimes, to my 
shame be it spoken, I take somewhat longer 
journeys than what a wise man would think 
altogether right. — But the truth is, — I am 
not a wise man ; — and besides, am a mortal 
of so little consequence in the world, it is 



not much matter what Tdo: so I seldom 
fret or fume at all about if : nor docs it much 
disturb my rest, when I see such groat lord* 
and tall personages &s hereafter follow ;— 
such, for instance, as my lord A, B,C, D. 
E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, and so 
on, all of a row, mounted upon their sevcnti 
horses ; — some with large stirrups, getting 

on with a more grave and sober pace ; 

others, on the contrary, tucked up to their 
very chins, with whips across their mouths, 
scouring and scampering away like so many 
little party-colored devils astride a mort- 
gage, — and as if some of them were re- 
solved to break their necks. — So much the 
better, — say I to myself; — for, in case the 
worst should happen, the world will make 
a shift to do excellently well without them ; 
and for the rest, — why, — God speed them, 
— e'en let them ride on without opposition 
from me; for, were their lordships unhorsed 
this very night — 'tis ten to one but that 
many of them would be worse mounted by 
one half before to-morrow morning. 

Not one of these instances therefore can 
be said to break in upon my rest. — But 
there is an instance, which I own puts me 
off my guard, and that is, when I see one 
born for great actions, and, what is stil. 
more for his honor, whose nature ever in- 
clines him to good ones ; — when I behold 
such a one, my Lord, like yourself, whose 
principles and conduct are as generous and 
noble as his blood, and whom, for that reason 
a corrupt world cannot spare one moment 
— when I see such a one, my Lord, mounted 
though it is but for a minute beyond the 
time which my love to my country has pre- 
scribed to him, and my zeal for his glory 
wishes, — then, my Lord, I cease to be a phi- 
losopher, and in the first transport of an 
honest impatience, I wish thelloBBY-HoRSE, 
with all its fraternity, at the Devil. 

" My Lord, 
" I maintain this to be a dedication, 
"notwithstanding its singularity in the 
" three great essentials of matter, form, and 
" place : I beg, therefore, you will accept i» 
"as such, and that you will permit me to 
"lay it, with the most respr* ,ful humility, 
"at your Lordship's feet, — when you arn 
" upon them, — which you can be when you 
"please; — and that is, my Lord, whenever 



12 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



'-there is occasion for it; and I will add, to 
" the bost purposes too. 

" I have the honor to be, 
"My Lord, 
** Your Lordship's most obedient, 
" and most devoted, 

" and most humble servant, 

"Tristram Shandy." 



CHAP. IX. 

f solemnly declare to all mankind, that 
(he above dedication was made for no one 
Prince, Prelate, Pope, or Potentate, — Duke, 
Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron, of this, 
or any other realm in Christendom ; — nor 
has it yet been hawked about, or offered 
publicly or privately, directly or indirectly, 
to any one person or personage, great or 
email ; but is honestly a.true virgin-Dedica- 
tion untried on, upon any soul living. 

I labor this point so particularly, merely 
to remove any offence or objection which 
might arise against it from the manner in 
which I propose to make the most of it; — 
which is the putting it up fairly to public 
sale ; which I now do. 

— Every author has a way of his own in 
bringing his points to bear; — for my own 
part, as I hate chaffering and higgling for 
a few guineas in a dark entry, I resolved 
within myself, from the very beginning, to 
deal squarely and openly with your Great 
Polks in this affair, and try whether I should 
not come off the better by it. 

If therefore there is any one Duke, Mar- 
qois, Earl, Viscount, or Baron, in these His 
Majesty's dominions, who stands in need 
of a tight, genteel dedication, and whom 
the above will suit, (for, by the bye, unless 
it suits in some degree, I will not part 
with it,) — it is much at his service for fifty 
guineas; which I am positive is twenty 
guineas less than it ought to be afforded 
lor, by any man of genius. 

My Lord, if you examine it over again, 
it is far from being a gross piece of daubing, 
as some dedications are. The design, your 
Lordship sees, is good, the coloring trans- 
parent, — the drawing not amiss; — or, to 
Hpea! more like k man of science, and 
measure my piece in the painter's scale, 



divided into 20, — I oelieve, my Lord, th<s 
outlines will turn out as 12, — the composi- 
tion as 9, — the coloring as 7, — the expres- 
sion 13 and a half, — and the design, if 1 
may be allowed, my Lord, to understand my 
own design, and supposing absolute perfec- 
tion in designing, to be as 20, — I think it 
cannot well fall short of 19. Besides all 
this, — there' is keeping in it ; and the dark 
strokes in the Hobby-Horse (which is a 
secondary figure, and a kind of back-ground 
to the whole,) give great force to the prin- 
cipal lights in your own figure, and make 
it come off wonderfully; — and besides, there 
is an air of originality in the tout ensemble. 

Be pleased, my good Lord, to order the 
sum to be paid into the hands of Mr. Dods- 
ley, for the benefit of the author ; and in 
the next edition care shall be taken that 
this chapter be expunged, and your Lord- 
ship's titles, distinctions, arms, and good ac- 
tions, be placed at the front of the preced- 
ing chapter: all which, from the words De 
gustibns non est disputandum, and what- 
ever else in this book relates to Hobby- 
Horses, but no more, shall stand dedicated 
to your Lordship. — The rest I dedicate to 
the Moon, who, by the bye, of all the Pa- 
trons or Matrons I can think of, has most 
power to set my book a-going, and make 
the world run mad after it. 
Bright Goddess, 

If thou art not too busy with Candid and 
Miss Cunegund's affairs, — take Tristram 
Shandy's under thy protection also. 



CHAP. X. 

Whatever degree of small merit the 
act of benignity in favor of the midwife 
might justly claim, or in whom that claim 
truly rested, — at first sight seems not very 
material to this history ; certain, however, 
it was, that the gentlewoman, the parson's 
wife, did run away at that time with the 
whole of it : and yet, for my life, I cannot 
help thinking but that the parson himself, 
though he had not the good fortune to hit 
upon the design first, — yet, as he heartily 
concurred in it the moment it was laid be- 
fore him, and as heartily parted with hia 
money to carry it into execution, had a claim 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 13 

if not a full half of on the seat with green plush, garnished 
with a double row of silver-headed studs, 
and a noble pair of shining brass stirrups 
with a housing altogether suitable, of gre} 
superfine cloth, with an edging of black 
lace, terminating inadeep, black, silk fringe, 
poudre d'nr: — all which he had purchased 
in the pride and prime of his life, together 
with a grand embossed bridle, ornamented 

at all points as it should be. But not 

caring to banter his beast, he had hung all 
these up behind his study-door; and, in lieu 
of them, had seriously befitted him with just 
such a bridle and such a saddle as the figure 
and value of such a steed might well and 
truly deserve. 

In the several sallies about his parish, and 
in the neighboring visits to the gentry who 
lived around him, — you will easily compre- 
hend, that the parson, so appointed, would 
both hear and see enough to keep his phi- 



:o some share of it, 
wnatever nonor was due to it. 

The world at that time was pleased to 
determine the matter otherwise. 

Lay down the book, and I will allow you 
naif a day to give a probable guess at the 
grounds of this procedure. 

Be it known then, that, for about five 
years before the date of the midwife's li- 
cense, of which you have had so circum- 
stantial an account, — the parson we have 
to do with, had made himself a country-talk 
by a breach of all decorum, which he had 
committed against himself, his station, and 
his office : — and that was in never appearing 
better, or otherwise mounted, than upon a 
lean, sorry, jack-ass of a horse, value aoout 
one pound fifteen shillings; who, to shorten 
all description of him, was full brother to 
Rosinante, as far as similitude congenial 
could make him ; for he answered his de- 
scription to a hairbreadth in every thing, — 
except that I do not remember 'tis anywhere 
said that Rosinante was brokenwinded ; and 
that, moreover, Rosinante, as it is the hap- 
piness of most Spanish horses, fat or lean, 
— was undoubtedly a horse at all points. 

I know very well that the Hero's horse 
was a horse of chaste deportment, which 
may have given grounds for the contrary 
opinion: but it is as certain, at the same 
ti.ne that Rosinante's continency (as may be 
demor crated from the adventure of the 
Yanguesian carriers) proceeded from no 
bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but from 
the temperance and orderly current of his 
blood. — And let me tell you, Madam, there 
is a great deal of very good chastity in the 
world, in behalf of which you could not say 
more for your life. 

Let that be as it may, as my purpose is 
to do exact justice to every creature brought 
upon the stage of this dramatic work, — I 
could not stifle this distinction in favor of 
Don Quixote's horse ; — in all other points, 
the parson's horse, I say, was just such an- 
other: for he was as lean, and as lank, and 
as sorry a jade, as Humility herself could 
have bestrided. 

In the estimation of here and there a man 
of weak judgment, it was greatly in the J the rider deserved; — that they were, cen 
parson's power to have helped the figure ofj taur-like, both of a piece. At other times, 
this horse of his, — for he was master of a land in other moods, when his spirits were 
vpi-v handsome demi-peak'd saddle, quilted j above 'he temptation of false wit — *ie would 

2 



losophy from rusting. To speak the truth, 
he never could enter a village, but he caught 

the attention of both old and young. 

Labor stood still as he passed, — the bucket 
hung suspended in the middle of the well 
— the spinning-wheel forgot its round, — 
even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap them- 
selves stood gaping till he had got out of 
sight; and as his movement was not of the 
quickest, he had generally time enough 
upon his hands to make his observations, — 
to hear the groans of the serious, — and the 
laughter of the light-hearted: all which he 
bore with excellent tranquillity. — His char- 
acter was, — he loved a jest in his heart, — 
and as he saw himself in the true point of 
ridicule, he would say he could not be angry 
with others for seeing him in a light in which 
he so strongly saw himself; — so that to his 
friends, who knew his foible was not the 
love of money, and who therefore made 
the less scruple in bantering the extrava- 
gance of his humor, — instead of giving the 
true cause, — he chose rather to join in the 
laugh against himself; and as he never 
carried one single ounce of flesh upon his 
own bones, being altogether as spare a 
figure as his beast, — he would sometimes 
insist upon it, that the horse was as good a> 



14 



LIFE AND OriNIONS 



say, he found himself going off fast in a 
consumption ; and, with great gravity, 
would pretend, he could not bear the sight 
of a fat horse, without a dejection of heart, 
and a sensible alteration in his pulse ; and 
that he had made choice of the lean one he 
rode upon, not only to keep himself in coun- 
tenance, but in spirits. 

At different times he would give fifty 
humorous and apposite reasons for riding 
a meek-spirited jade of a brokenwinded 
horse, preferably to one of mettle ; — for on 
such a one he could sit mechanically, and 
meditate as delightfully de vanitate mundi 
el fiiga sceculi, as with the advantage of a 
death's-head before him ; — that, in all other 
exercitations, he could spend his time, as 
he rode slowly along, — to as much account 
as in his study ; — that he could draw up an 
argument in his sermon, — or a hole in his 
orceches, as steadily on the one as in the 
other ; — that brisk trotting and slow argu- 
mentation, like wit and judgment, were 
two incompatible movements. — But that 
upon his steed, he could unite and reconcile 
every thing; — he could compose his ser- 
mon, — he could compose his cough, — and, 
in case nature gave a call that w T ay, he 
could likewise compose himself to sleep. — 
In short, the parson upon such encounters 
would assign any cause but the true cause ; — 
and he withheld the true one, only out of a 
nicety of temper, because he thought it did 
honour to him. 

But the truth of the story was as follows: — 
In the first years of this gentleman's life, 
and about the time when the superb saddle 
and bridle were purchased by him, it had 
been his manner, or vanity, or call it what 
you will, — to run into the opposite extreme. 
-In the language of the country where he 
dwelt, he was said to have loved a good 
horse, and generally had one of the best 
in the whole parish standing in his stable 
always ready for saddling; and as the near- 
est midwife, as I told you, did not live nearer 
to the village than seven miles, and in a 
/ile country, it so fell out that the poor gen- 
tleman was scarce a whole week together 
without some piteous application for his 
beast • and as he was not an unkind-hearted 
•nan, and every case was more pressing and 
more distressful than the last, — as much as 
a« i«,ved his beast, he had never a heart to re- 



fuse him ; the upshot of which was gene- 
rally this, that his horse was either clapped, 
or spavined, or greazed ; or he was twitter- 
boned, or brokenwinded, or something, in 
short, or other had befallen him, which 
would let him carry no flesh ; — so that he 
had every nine or ten months a bad horse 
to get rid of, — and a good horse to purchase 
in his stead. 

What the loss in such a balance might 
amount to, communibus annis, I would 
leave to a special jury of sufferers in the 
same traffic, to determine; — but let it be 
what it would, the honest gentleman bore 
it for many years without a murmur, till at 
length, by repeated ill accidents of the kind, 
he found it necessary to take the thing 
under consideration; and, upon weighing 
the whole, and summing it up in his mind, 
he found it not only disproportioned to his 
other expenses, but withal so heavy an arti- 
cle in itself as to disable him from any other 
act of generosity in his parish ; besides this, 
he considered that with half the sum thus 
galloped away, he could do ten times as 
much good; — and what still weighed more 
with him than all other considerations put 
together, was this, that it confined all his 
charity into one particular channel, and 
where, as he fancied, it was the least 
wanted ; namely, to the child-bearing and 
child-getting part of his parish; reserving 
nothing for the impotent, — nothing for tha 
aged, — nothing for the many comfortless 
scenes he was hourly called forth to visit, 
where poverty, and sickness, and affliction 
dwelt together. 

For these reasons he resolved to discon- 
tinue the expense; and there appeared but 
two possible ways to extricate him clearly 
out of it ; and these were, either to make it 
an irrevocable law never more to lend his 
steed upon any application whatever, — or 
else be content to ride the last poor devil, 
such as they had made him, with all his 
aches and infirmities, to the very end of 
the chapter. 

As he dreaded his own constancy in the 
first, — he very cheerfully betook himself to 
the second ; and though he could very weli 
have explained it, as I said, to his honour,- 
yet, for that very reason, he had a spirit 
above it ; choosing rather to bear the con- 
tempt of his enemies and th« laughter of 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 15 

directions, that, with all the titles to praise 
which a rectitude of heart can give, the 
doers of them are nevertheless forced to 
live and die without it. 

Of the truth of which, this gentleman 
was a painful example. But to know 



his friends, tlnn undergo the pain of telling 
a story which might seem a panegyric upon 
himself. 

I have the highest idea of the spiritual 
and refined sentiments of this reverend 
gentleman, from this single stroke in his 
character, which I think comes up to any by what means this came to pass, — and to 
of the honest refinements of the peerless make that knowledge of use to you, I insist 



knight of La Mancha, whom, by the bye, 
with all his follies, I love more, and would 
actually have gone farther to have paid a 
visit to, than the greatest hero of antiquity. 
But this is not the moral of my story : the 
thing I had in view was to show the temper 
of the world in the whole of this affair. — 
For you must know, that so long as this 
explanation would have done the parson 
credit, — the devil a soul could find it out: — 
I suppose his enemies would not, and that 
his friends could not. But no sooner 



upon it that you read the two following 
chapters, which contain such a sketch of 
his life and conversation, as will carry ita 
moral along with it. — When this is done, 
if nothing stops us in our way, we shall go 
on with the midwife. 



CHAP. XI. 



Yortck was this parson's name, and, 
what is very remarkable in it (as appears 
from a most ancient account of the family, 
wrote upon strong vellum, and now in per- 



did he bestir himself in behalf of the mid- 
wife, and pay the expenses of the ordinary's 
license to set her up, — but the whole secret 
came out; every horse he had lost, and two! feet preservation,) it had been exactly so 

horses more than ever he had lost, with all spelt for near, 1 was within an ace of 

the circumstances of their destruction, were | saying nine hundred years; — but I would 
known and distinctly remembered. — The : not shake my credit in telling an improbable 
story ran like wildfire; — "The parson had truth, however indisputable in itself; — and 
"a returning fit of pride which had just therefore I shall content myself with only 
"seized him, and he was going to be well : saying, it had been exactly so spelt, 



" mounted once again in his life ; and if it 
" was so, 'twas plain as the sun at noon-day, 
"he would pocket the expense of the li- 
" cense ten times told, the very first year : — 
" so that every body was left to judge what 
" were his views in this act of charity." 
What were his views in this, and in 



without the least variation or transposition 
of a single letter, for I do not know how 
long; which is more than I would venture 
to say of one half of the best surnames in 
the kingdom : which, in a course of years, 
have generally undergone as many chops 
and changes as their owners. — Has this 



every other action of his life, — or rather been owing to the pride, or to the shame 
what were the opinions which floated in J of the respective proprietors'? — In honest 
the brains of other people concerning it, j truth, I think sometimes to the one, and 
was a thought which too much floated in j sometimes to tho other, just as the tempta- 
his own, and too often broke in upon hisjtion has wrought. But a villanous affair it 
rest, when he should have been sound asleep, is, and will one day so blend and confound 
About ten years ago, this gentleman had |us all together, that no one shall be able to 
the good fortune to be made entirely easy stand up and swear, " That his own great- 



upon that score, — it being just so long since 
he left his parish, — and the whole world at 
the samt time, behind him ;— and stands ac- 
countable to a Judge of whom he will have 
no cause to complain. 



"grandfather was the man who did either 
" this or that." 

This evil had been sufficiently fenced 
against by the prudent care of the Yorick 
family; — and their religious preservation 



But there is a fatality attends the actions |of these records I quote, which do farthet 
of some men: order thein as they will, they [inform us, That the family was originally 
pass through a certain medium, which so of Danish extraction, ant- had been trans- 
twists at;J refracts them from their true .planted into England as early as in the 



16 LIFE AND. OPINIONS 

reign of Uorwend ilua. king- of Denmark, ; degree in this unsettled island, wherj N» 
in whose court, it seem>>, an ancestor of this! tare, in her gifts and dispositions of thi* 



Mr. Yorick, and from whom he was lineally 
descended, held a considerable post to the 
day of his death. Of what nature this con- 
siderable post was, this record saith not ; — 
it only adds, That for near two centuries, 
it had been totally abolished, as altogether 
unnecessary not only in that court, but in 
every other court of the Christian world. 

It has often come into my head, that this 
post could be no other than that of the king's 
chief jester, — and that Hamlet's Yorick, 



kind, is most whimsical and capricious 
Fortune herself not being more so in the 
bequest of her goods and chattels than she. 
This is all that ever staggered my faith 
in regard to Yorick's extraction, who, by 
what I can remember of him, and by all 
the accounts I could ever get of him, seemed 
not to have had one single drop of Danish 
blood in his whole crasis : in nine hundred 
years, it might possibly have all run out ; 
1 will not philosophize one moment 



in our Shakspeare, many of whose plays, with you about it : for happen how it would, 
you know, are founded upon authenticated the fact was this : — That instead of that 



facts, was certainly the very man. 



cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense 



I have not the time to look into Saxo- and humors you would have looked for in 



Grammaticus's Danish History, to know 
the certainty of this, — but if you have lei- 
sure and can easily get at the book, you 
may do it full as well yourself. 

I had just time in my travels through 



one so extracted, — he was, on the contrary, 
as mercurial and sublimated a composition. 
— as heteroclite a creature in all his de- 
clensions, with as much life and whim, 

and gaite de cceur about him, as the kind 



Denmark, with Mr. Noddy's eldest son, iliest climate could have engendered and 
whom, in the year 1741, I accompanied as put together. With all this sail, poor Yorick 
governor, riding along with him at a pro- carried not one ounce of ballast ; he was 
digious rate through most parts of Europe, utterly unpractised in the world ; and, at 
and of which original journey performed the age of twenty-six, knew just about as 



by us two, a most delectable narrative will 
oe given in the progress of this work; — I 
nad just time, I say, and that was all, to 
prove the truth of an observation made by 

a long sojourner in that country; 

namely, " That Nature was neither very 
" lavish, nor was she very stingy in her 
" gifts of genius and capacity to its inhab- 
11 itants ; — but, like a discreet parent, was 
" moderately kind to them all ; observing 
*• such an equal tenor in the distribution of 
" her favors, as to bring them, in those 
" points, pretty nearly to a level with each 
"other; so that you will meet with few 
44 instances in that kingdom of refined parts; 
" but a great deal of good plain household 
" understanding amongst all ranks of people, 
*• of which every body has a share ;" which 
is, I think, very right. 

With us, you see, the case is quite differ- 
ent : — we are all ups and downs in this mat- 
ter . — you are a great genius ; — or 'tis fifty 
ro one, Sir, you are a great dunce and a 
blockhead ; — not that there is a total want 
of intermediate steps; — no, we are not so 
irregular as that comes to; — but the two 
imremee are more common, and in a greater 



well how to steer his course in it as a 
romping unsuspicious girl of thirteen: so 
that upon his first setting out, the brisk 
gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran 
him foul ten times in a day of somebody's 
tackling ; and as the grave and more slow- 
paced were oftenest in his way, you 

may likewise imagine, 'twas with such he 
had generally the ill luck to get the most 
entangled. For aught I know, there might 
be some mixture of unlucky wit at the 

bottom of such fracas : for, to speak the 

truth, Yorick had an invincible dislike and 
opposition in his nature to gravity ; — not to 
gravity as such ; — for where gravity was 
wanted, he would be the most grave or 
serious of mortal men for days and weeks 
together; but he was an enemy to the 
affectation of it, and declared open war 
against it, only as it appeared a cloak for 
ignorance, or for folly : and then, whenever 
it fell in his way, however sheltered and 
protected, he seldom gave it much quarter. 
Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, 
he would say, that Gravity was an errant 
scoundrel, and, he would add, — of the most 
dangerous kind too, — because a sly one 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



1? 



and that he veril) beiieved, more honest 
well-meaning peopk were bubbled out of 
their goods and money by it in one twelve- 
month, than by pocket-picking and shop- 
lifting in seven. In the naked temper which 
a merry heart discovered, he would say 
there was no danger, — but to itself: — 
whereas the very essence of gravity was 
design, and consequently deceit ; — 'twas a 
taught trick, to gain credit of the world for 
more sense and knowledge than a man was 
worth ; and that, with all his pretensions, 
it was no better, but often worse, than what 
a French wit had long ago defined it, viz 
A mysterious carriage of the body, to cover 
the defects of the mind: — which definition 
of gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence, 
would say, deserved to be wrote in letters 
of gold. 

But, in plain truth, he was a man un- 
hackneyed and unpractised in the world ; 
and was altogether as indiscreet and foolish 
on every other subject of discourse where 
policy is wont to impress restraint. Yorick 
had no impression but one, and that was 
what arose from the nature of the deed 
spoken of; which impression he would 
usually translate into plain English, without 
any periphrasis ; — and too oft without much 
distinction of either person, time, or place ; 
— so that when mention was made of a piti- 
ful or an ungenerous proceeding, he 

never gave himself a moment's time to re- 
flect who was the hero of the piece, 

what his station, or how far he had power 

to hurt him hereafter ; but, if it was a 

dirty action, — without more ado, — The man 
was a dirty fellow ; — and so on. — And as 
his comments had usually the ill fate to be 
terminated either in a bon mot, or to be en- 
livened throughout with some drollery or 
humor of expression, it gave wings to 
Yorick's indiscretion. In a word, though 
he never sought, yet, at the same time, as 
he seldom shunned, occasions of saying 
what came uppermost, and without much 
jeremony, he had but too many tempta- 
tions in life, of scattering his wit and his 
humor, — his gibes and his jests, about him. 
They were not lost for want of gath- 
ering. 

What were the consequences, and what 
was Yorick's catastrophe thereupon, you 
will read in the next chapter. 
C 



CHAP XII. 



The Mortgager and Mortgagee differ the 
one from the other not more in length o. 
purse, than the Jester and Jestee do in that 
of memory. But in this the comparison 
between them runs, as the scholiast? call it, 
upon all-four; which, by the bye, is upon 
one or two legs more than some of the best 
of Homer's can pretend to ; — namely, That 
the one raises a sum, and the other a laugh 
at your expense, and thinks no more about 
it. Interest, however, still runs on in both 
cases; — the periodical or accidental pay- 
ments of it, just serving to keep the mem- 
ory of the affair alive ; till, at length, in 
some evil hour, — pop comes the creditor 
upon each, and by demanding principal upon 
the spot, together with full interest to the 
very day, makes them both feel the full 
extent of their obligations;. 

As the reader (for I hate your ifs) has a 
thorough knowledge of human nature, I 
need not say more to satisfy him, that my 
Hero could not go on at this rate without 
some slight experience of these incidental 
mementoes. To speak the truth, he had 
wantonly involved himself in a multitude 
of small book-debts of this stamp, which, 
notwithstanding Eugenius's frequent ad- 
vice, he too much disregarded ; thinking, 
that as not one of them was contracted 
through any malignancy ; — but, on the con- 
trary, from an honesty of mind, and a mere 
jocundity of humor, they would all of them 
be crossed out in course. 

Eugenius would never admit this; and 
would often tell him, that one day or other 
he w r ould certainly be reckoned with ; and 
he would often add, in an accent of sorrow- 
ful apprehension, — to the uttermost mite. 
To which Yorick, with his usual careless- 
ness of heart, would as often answer with 
a pshaw ! — and if the subject was started ir 
the fields, — with a hop, skip, and a jump at 
the end of it; but if close pent up in the 
social chimney-corner, where the culprit 
was barricado'd in with a table and a couple 
of arm-chairs, and could not so readily fly 
off in a tangent, Eugenius *vould then gc 
on with his lecture upon discretion, in 
words to this purpose, though somewhat 
better put together : — 

Trust me, dear Yorick, this unwary 
2* 



18 LIFE AND 

pleasantry of thine will sooner or later bring 
thee into scrapes and difficulties, which no 

*.fter-wit can extricate thee out of. In 

these sallies, too oft, I see it happens, that 
u person laughed at considers himself in 
the light of a person injured, with all the 
rights of such a situation belonging to him ; 
and when thou viewest him in that light 
too, and reckonest up his friends, his family, 

his kindred, and allies, and musterest 

up with them the many recruits which will 
list under him from a sense of common 

danger, "tis no extravagant arithmetic 

to say, that for every ten jokes, — thou hast 
got an hundred enemies ; and till thou hast 
gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about 
thine ears, and art half stung to death by 
them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so. 

I cannot suspect it in the man whom I 
esteem, that there is the least spur from 
spleen or malevolence of intent in these 
sallies; — I believe and know them to be 
truly honest and sportive : — but consider, 
my dear lad, that fools cannot distinguish 
this, — and that knaves will not: and that 
thou knowest not what it is either to pro- 
voke the one, or to make merry with the 
other : whenever they associate for mu- 
tual defence, depend upon it, they will carry 
on the war in such a manner against thee, 
my dear friend, as to make thee heartily 
sick of it, and of thy life too. 

Revenge from some baneful corner shall 
level a tale of dishonor at thee, which no 
innocence of heart or integrity of conduct 

shall set right. The fortunes of thy 

house shall totter; — thy character, which 
led the way to them, shall bleed on every 
side of it; — thy faith questioned, — thy 
works belied, — thy wit forgotten, — thy 
learning trampleu on. To wind up the last 
scene of thy tragedy, Cruelty and Coward- 
ice, twin ruffians, hired and set on by Mal- 
ice in the dar*, shall strike together at all 

thy infirmities and mistakes; the best 

of us, my dear lad, lie open there, and 

trust me, trust me, Yorick, when to 

gratify a private appetite, it is once re- 
solved upon, that an innocent and an help- 
less creature shall be sacrificed, "'tis an easy 
matter to pick up sticks enough jrom any 
thicket where it has strayed, to make afire 
v> offer it up with. 

Yorick scarce ever heard this sad vatici- 



OPINIONS 

nation of his destiny read over to him, hf: 
with a tear stealing from his eye, and a 
promissory look attending it that he Was re- 
solved, for the time to come, to ride his tit 
with more sobriety. — But, alas, too late ! — 
a grand confederacy, with ***** and ***** at 
the head of it, was formed before the first 
prediction of it. — The whole plan of attack, 
just as Eugenius had foreboded, was put in 
execution all at once, — with so little mercy 
on the side of the allies, — and so little sus- 
picion in Yorick, of what was carrying on 
against him, — that when he thought, good 
easy man! full surely preferment was o* 
ripening, — they had smote his root, and then 
he fell, as many a worthy man had fallen 
before him. 

Yorick, however, fought it out with all 
imaginable gallantry for some time; till, 
overpowered by numbers, and worn out at 
length by the calamities of the war, — but 
more so by the ungenerous manner in which 
it w T as carried on, — he threw down the 
sword ; and, though he kept up his spirits 
in appearance to the last, he died, never- 
theless, as was generally thought, quite 
broken-hearted. 

What inclined Eugenius to the same 
opinion, was as follows : — 

A few hours before Yorick breathed his 
last, Eugenius stept in, with an intent to 
take his last sight and last farewell of him. 
Upon his drawing Yorick's curtain, and ask- 
ing how he felt himself, Yorick, looking 
up in his face, took hold of his hand, — and, 
after thanking him for the many tokens of 
his friendship to him, for which, he said, if 
it was their fate to meet heieafter, he would 
thank him again and again, — he told him, 
he was within a few hours of giving his 
enemies the slip for ever. — I hope not, an- 
swered Eugenius, with tears trickling down 
his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that 
ever man spoke, — I hope not, Yorick, said 

he. Yorick replied with a look up, and a 

gentle squeeze of Eugenius's hand, and that 
was all — but it cut Eugenius to his heart. 

Come, come, Yorick, quoth Eugenius, 

wiping his eyes, and summoning up the man 
within him, — my dear lad, be comforted, — let 
not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee 
at this crisis when thou most want'st them; 

who knows what resources are in store. 

and what the power of God may yet do foi 



tnee Yorick laid his hand upon his heart, 

and gently shook his head. — For my part, 
continued Eugenius, crying bitterly as he 
uttered the words, — I declare I know not, 
Yorick, how to part with thee ; and would 
gladly flatter my hopes, added Eugenius, 
cheering up his voice, that there is still 
enough left of thee to make a Bishop, and 

that I may live to see it. 1 beseech thee, 

Eugeniu?, quoth Yorick, taking offhis night- 
cap, as wull as he could with his left hand — 
his right being still clasped close in that of 
Eugenius, — I beseech thee to take a view 

of my head. 1 see nothing that ails it, 

replied Eugenius. Then alas! my friend, 
said Yorick, let me tell you, that 'tis so 
bruised and misshapen with the blows which 
***** an( ] ***** an( j gome others have so un- 
handsomely given me in the dark, that I 
might say witli Sancho Pan<;a, that, should 
I recover, and "mitres thereupon be suffered 
" to rain down from Heaven as thick as hail, 

" not one of them would fit it." Yorick's 

*ast breath was hanging upon his trembling 

lips, ready to depart as he uttered this ; 

yet still it was uttered with something of 

a Cervantic tone ; and as he spoke it 

Eugenius could perceive a stream of Ianr 
bent fire lighted up for a moment in his 

eyes : faint picture of those flashes of 

his spirit, which (as Shakspeare said of his 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 9 

ancestor) were wont to set the table m a 
roar! 

Eugenius was convinced from this, that the 
heart of his friend was broke : he squeezeu 

his hand, and then walked softly out of 

the room, weeping as he walked. Yorick 
followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door 
— he then closed them, — and never openee 
them more. 

He lies buried in the corner of his church- 
yard in the parish of , under a plain 

marble slab, which his friend Euoenius, bv 



leave of his executors, laid upon his grave, 
with no more than these three words of in- 
scription, serving both for his epitaph and 
elegy:— 




Ten times a day has ^ ^rick's gnost the 
consolation to hear his mo iumen'al inscrip- 
tion read over with such a variety of plain- 
tive tones as denote a general pity and es- 
teem for him : a footway crossing the 

church-yard, close by the side of his grave, 

not a passenger goes by without stopping 

cast a 1< 
walks on, 



to cast a look upon it, — and sighing, *v? he 



ALAS, POOR YORICK J 



20 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



. 






*j 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



2i 



CHAP. XIII. 



It is so long since the reader of this rhap- 
sodical work has been parted from the mid- 
wife, that it is high time to mention her 
again to him, merely to put him in mind 
that there is such a body still in the world, 
and whom, upon the best judgment I can 
form upon my own plan at present, I am 
going to introduce to him for good and all : 
but as fresh matter may be started, and 
much unexpected business fall out betwixt 
the reader and myself, which may require 

immediate dispatch, 'twas right to take 

care that the poor woman should not be 
lost in the mean time ; because, when she 
is wanted, we can no way do without her. 

I think, I told you that this good woman 
was a person of no small note and conse- 
quence throughout our whole village and 
township ; — that her fame had spread itself 
to the very out-edge and circumference of 
that circle of importance, of which kind 
every soul living, whether he has a shirt 

10 his back or not has one surrounding 

him ; — which said circle, by the way, when- 
ever it is said that such a one is of great 

weight and importance in the world, 1 

desire may be enlarged or contracted in 
your worship's fancy, in a compound ratio 
of the station, profession, knowledge, abili- 
ties, height and depth (measuring both ways) 
of the personage brought before you. 

In the present case, if I remember, I 
fixed it about four or five miles ; which not 
only comprehended the whole parish, but 
extended itself to two or three of the ad 
jacent hamlets in the skirts of the next 
parish; which made a considerable thing 
of it. I must add, that she was, moreover, 
very well looked on at one large grange- 
house, and some other odd houses and farms 
within two or three miles, as I said, from 

the smoke of her own chimney : but I 

must here, once for all, inform you, that all 
this will be more exactly delineated and 
explain'd in a map, now in the hands of the 
engraver, which, with many other pieces 
and developments of this work, will be 
'ulded to the end of the twentieth volume, — 
not to swell the work, — I detest the thought 
of such a thing; — but by way of comment- 
ary, scholium, illustration, and kev to such 
passages, incidents or innuendoes as shall be j 



| thought to be either of private interprcta- 
j tion, or of dark or doubtful meaning, after 
my Life and Opinions shall have been read 
over (now don't forget the meaning of the 

w T ord) by all the world : which, betwix. 

you and me, and in spite of all the gentle 
men-reviewers in Great Britain, and of al. 
that their worships shall undertake to write 
or say to the contrary, — I am determined 
shall be the case. — I need not tell your 
Worship that all this is spoke in confidence. 



CHAP. XIV. 

Upon looking into my mother's marriage- 
settlement, in order to satisfy myself and 
reader in a point necessary to be cleared 
up, before we could proceed any farther in 
this history, — I had the good fortune to pop 
upon the very thing I wanted before I had 
read a day and a half straight forwards : — 
it might have taken me up a month; — 
which shows plainly, that when a man sits 
down to write a history, — though it be but 
the History of Jack Hickathrift or Tom 
Thumb, he knows no more than his heels 
what lets and confounded hindrances he is 
to meet with in his way, — or what a dance 
he may be led, by one excursion or another, 
before all is over. Could a historiographer 
drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on 

his mule, — straightforward; for instance, 

from Rome all the way to Loretto, without 
ever once turning his head aside, either 

to the right hand or to the left he might 

venture to foretell you to an hour when he 

should get to his journey's end ; but the 

thing is, morally speaking, impossible ; for 
if he is a man of the least spirit, he wili 
have fifty deviations from a straight line 
to make with this or that party as he goeu 
along, which he can noways "void. He will 
have views and prospects to himself per- 
petually soliciting his eye, rdiieh he can no 
more help standing still to look at than by 
can fly; he will, moreover, hdv-a varicus 

Accounts to reconcile, 

Anecdotes to pick up, 

Inscriptions to make out. 

Stories ts weave in, 

Traditions to shift, 

Persona pes to rail upon 



22 

Fj*negyric» to pa te up at this door, 

Pasquinades at that: all which both 

the man and the mule are exempt from. 
To sum up all, There are archives at every 
stag j to be look'd into, and rolls, records, 
documents, and endless genealogies, which 
justice ever and anon calls him back to 

stay the reading of: in short, there is 

no end of it ; — for my own part, I declare I 
have been at it these six weeks, making ail 
the speed I possibly could, — and am not yet 
born : — I have just been able, and that is all, 
to tell you when it happened, but not how ; 
-so that you see the thing is yet far from 
being accomplished. 

These unforeseen stoppages, which I 
own I had no conception of when T first set 
•out; — but which, I am convinced now, will 
rather increase than diminish as I advance, 
— have struck out a hint which I am re- 
solved to follow ; and that is, — not to be 

in a hurry ; — but to go on leisurely, writing 
and publishing two volumes of my life 
every year; — which, if I am suffered to go 
on quietly, and can make a tolerable bar- 
gain with my bookseller, I shall continue 
to do as long as I live. 



CHAP. XV. 

The article in my mother's marriage-set- 
tlement, which I told the reader I was at 
the pains to search for. and which, now that 
I have found it, I think proper to lay before 
him, — is so much more fully expressed in 
the deed itself than ever I can pretend to 
do it, that it would be barbarity to take it 
out of the lawyer's hand : — it is as follows : — 

"glut* thts Indenture (urtfttr 

; ' VoitUeSlSrth,Thatthe said Walter Shan- 
'* dy, merchant, in consideration of the said 
' intended marriage to be had, and, by God's 
' Messing, to be well and truly solemnized 
' and consummated between the said Wal- 
'"ter Shandy and Elizabeth Mollineux 
" aforesaid, and divers other good and valu- 
able causes and considerations him there- 
" unto especially moving, — doth grant, co- 
venant, condescend, consent, conclude, 
"bargain, and fully agree to and with John 
"Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. the 
* above-named Trustees, &c &c — tO &tt, 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

" — That in case it should hereaflcr so fall 
" out, chance, happen, or otherwise come to 
"pass, — That the said Walter Shandy, 
" merchant, shall have left off business be- 
" fore the time or times that the said Eliza- 
beth Mollineux shall according to the 
" course of nature, or otherwise, have left 
" off bearing and bringing forth children ; — 
" and that, in consequence of the said Wal- 
" ter Shandy having so left off business, he 
"shall, in despight, and against the free 
l i will, consent and good liking of the said 
" Elizabeth Mollineux, — make a departure 
" from the city of London, in order to retire 
" to and dwell upon his estate at Shandy 

"Hall, in the county of , or, at any 

" other country-seat, castle, hall, mansion- 
" house, messuage, or grange-house, now 
"purchased or hereafter to be purchased, 
"or upon any part or parcel thereof:— 
" That then, and as often as the said Eliza- 
"beth Mollineux shall happen to be en- 
" ciente with child or children severally and 
" lawfully begot, or to be begotten upon the 
"body of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, 
"during her said coverture, — he, the said 
" Walter Shandy, shall, at his own proper 
"costs and charges, and out of his own 
" proper moneys, upon good and reasonable 
" notice, which is hereby agreed to be 
" within six weeks of her the said Elizabeth 
"Mollineux's full reckoning, or time of 
"supposed and computed delivery, — pay, 
" or cause to be paid, the sum of one hun- 
" dred and twenty pounds good and lawful 
" money, to John Dixon and James Turner, 
" Esqrs. or assigns, — upon trust and confi- 
" dence, and for and unto the use and uses, 
" intent, end, and purpose following : — 
" 2TJtat in tO !532--That the said sum of 
"one hundred and twenty pounds shall be 
"paid into the hands of the said Elizabeth 
" Mollineux, or to be otherwise applied by 
" them the said Trustees, for the well and 
" truly hiring of one coach, with able and snf- 
" ficient horses, to carry and convey the body 
" of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, and the 
" child or children which she shall be then 
" and there enciente and pregnant with,— 
"unto the city of London ; and for the fnr- 
"ther paying and defraying of rll other in- 
cidental costs, charges, and expenses 
" whatsoever, — in and about, and for, and 
" relating to, her said inl-endeC. delivery 






'and lying-in, in the said city or suburbs 
"thereof: and that the said Elizabeth Mol- 
" lineux shall and may, from time to time, 
"and at all such time and times as are here 
"covenanted and agreed upon, — peaceably 
" and quietly hire the said coach and horses, 
" and have free ingress, egress, and regress 
u throughout her journey, in and from the 
"said coach, according to the tenor, true 

4 intent, and meaning of these presents, 
" without any let, suit, trouble, disturb- 
" ance, molestation, discharge, hindrance, 
" forfeiture, eviction, vexation, interrup- 
tion, or encumbrance, whatsoever: — and 
" that it shall moreover be lawful to and for 
" the said Elizabeth Mollineux, from time 
"to time, and as oft or often as she shall 
" well and truly be advanced in her said 
" pregnancy, to the time heretofore stipula- 
ted and agreed upon, — to live and reside 
" in such place or places, and in such fam- 
" ily or families, and with such relations, 
" friends, and other persons within the said 
" city of London, as she at her own will 
1 and pleasure, notwithstanding her present 
"coverture, and as if she was a femme sole 
"and unmarried, — shall think fit. — £Cufa 

u thfstntffnturcfitrtherU)tturss= 

11 ttft, That for the more effectually carrying 
" of the said covenant into execution, the said 
"Walter Shandy, merchant, doth hereby 
"grant bargain, sell, release, and confirm 
" unto the said John Dixon and James Turn- 
"ei*, Esqrs. their heirs, executors, and as- 
" signs, in their actual possession now being, 
" by virtue of an indenture of bargain and sale 
" for a year to them the said John Dixon and 
*' Tames Turner, Esqrs. by him the said Wal- 
" ter Shandy, merchant, thereof made ; which 
"said bargain and sale for a year, bears date 
" the day next before the date of these pres- 
" ents, and by force and virtue of the statute 
r * for transferring of uses into possession, — 
* £illl the manor and lordship of Shandy in 

the county of , with all the rights, 

" members, and appurtenances thereof; and 
"all and every the messuages, houses, 
"buildings, barns, stables, orchards, gar- 
"dens, backsides, tofts, crofts, garths, cot- 
" tages, lands, meadows, feedings, pastures, 
"marshes, commons, woods, underwoods, 
"drains, fisheries, w T aters, and water- 
•' courses; — together with all rents, re- 
aversions, services, annuities, fee-farms, 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 23 

"knight's fees, views of frank-pledge, et*- 
"cheats, reliefs, mines, quarries, goods and 
"chattels of felons and fugitives, felons ot 
" themselves, and put in exigent, deodands, 
" freewarrens, and all other royalties and 
"seigniories, rights and jurisdictions, priv- 

" ileges and hereditaments whatsoever. 

" SKttfy fllSO the advowson, donation, pre- 
sentation, and free disposition of the rec- 
" tory or parsonage of Shandy aforesaid, and 
"all and every the tenths, tythes, glcbe- 
" lands." 



In three words, — My mother was to lie 
in (if she chose it) in London. 

But in order to put a stop to the practice 
of any unfair play on the part of my mother, 
which a marriage-article of this nature too 
manifestly opened a door to, and which in- 
deed had never been thought of at all, but 
for my uncle Toby Shandy, — a clause was 
added in security of my father, which was 
this: — "That in case my mother hereafter 
" should, at any time, put my father to the 
" trouble and expense of a London journey, 

" upon false cries and tokens, that, for 

" every such instance, she should forfeit all 
" the right and title which the covenant 
" gave her to the next turn : — but no more, 
" — and so on, toties quoties, in as effectual 
" a manner as if such a covenant betwixt 
" them had not been made." — This, by the 
way, was no more than what was reason- 
able; — and yet, as reasonable as it w T as, I 
have ever thought it hard that the whole 
weight of the article should have fallen 
entirely, as it did, upon myself. 

But I was begot and born to misfortunes ; 
— for my poor mother, whether it was wind 
or water, — or a compound cf both, — or nei • 
ther; — or whether it was simply the mere 
swell of imagination and fancy in her : — or 
how far a strong wish and desire to have it 
so, might mislead her judgment: — in short, 
whether she was deceived or deceiving in 
this matter, it no way becomes me to decide. 
The fact was this, That in the latter eno 
of September, 1717, which was the yeai 
before I was born, my mother having car- 
ried my father up to town much against th« 
grain, he peremptorily insisted upon the 
clause ; — so that I was doomed, by marriage- 
articles, to have my nose squeez'd as flat 
to my face, as if the destinies had actually 
spun me without one. 



24 LIFE AND 

How this event came about, — and what 
a train of vexatious disappointments, in one 
stage or other or' my life, have pursued me 
from the mere loss, or rather compression, 
of this one single member, — shall be laid 
before the reader all in due time. 



CHAP. XVI. , 

My father, as any body may naturally 
imagine, came down with my mother into 
the country, in but a pettish kind of a hu- 
mor. The first twenty or five-and-twenty 
miles, he did nothing in the world but fret 
and tease himself, and indeed my mother 
too., about the cursed expense, which he 
said might every shilling of it have been 
saved. — Then, what vexed him more than 
t .cry thing else was, the provoking time 
of the year, — which, as I told you, was to- 
wards the end of September, when his 
wall-fruit, and green gages especially, in 
which he was very curious, were just ready 

for pulling.- " Had he been whistled up 

' to London, upon a Tom Fool's errand,, in 
' any other month of the whole year, he 
" should not have said three words about it." 

For the next two whole stages, no sub- 
ject would go down, but the heavy blow he 
had sustained from the loss of a son, whom 
it seems he had fully reckoned upon in his 
mind, and registered down in his pocket- 
book, as a second staff for his old age, in 
case Bobby should fail him. " The disap- 
** pointment of this (he said) was ten times 
" more to a wise man than all the money 
" which the journey, &c. had cost him, put 
" together : — rot the hundred and twenty 
" pounds, — he did not mind it a rush." 

From Stilton, all the way to Grantham, 
nothing in the whole affair provoked him 
so much as the condolences of his friends, 
and the foolish figure they should both 

make at church the first Sunday; of 

which, in the satirical vehemence of his 
wit, now sharpened a little by vexation, he 
would give so many humorous and pro- 
voking descriptions, — and place his rib and 
bo tf in so many tormenting lights and atti- 
tudes in the face of the whole congregation, 
- (hat rny mother declared, these two stages 
H?Wfc wo truly tragi-comical, that she did 



OPINIONS 

nothing but laugh and cry in a breath, 
from one end to the other of them, all the 
way. 

From Grantham, till they had crossed the 
Trent, my father was out of all kind of pa- 
tience at the vile trick and imposition which 
he fancied my mother had put upon him in 
this affair. — " Certainly," he would say to 
himself, over and over again, " the woman 

" could not be deceived herself if she 

" could, what weakness !" — tormenting 

word ! which led his imagination a thorny 
dance, and before all was over, played the 

deuce and all with him ; for sure as 

ever the word weakness was uttered, and 
struck full upon his brain, — so sure it set 
him upon running divisions upon how many 

kinds of weaknesses there were ; that 

there was such a thing as weakness of the 
body, — as well as weakness of the mind, — 
and then he would do nothing but syllogize 
within himself, for a stage or two together, 
how far the cause of all these vexations 
might, or might not, have arisen out of 
himself. 

In short, he had so many little subjects 
of disquietude springing out of this one 
affair, all fretting successively in his mind 
as they rose up in it, that my mother, what- 
ever was her journey up, had but an uneasy 

journey of it down. In a word, as she 

complained to my uncle Toby, he would 
have tired out the patience of any flesh 
alive. 



CHAP. XVII. 

Though my father travelled homewards, 
as I told you, in none of the best of moods, 
— pshawing and pishing all the way down, 
— yet he had the complaisance to keep the 
worst part of the story still to himself; — 

! which was the resolution he had taken of 
doing himself the justice which my uncle 

! Toby's clause in the marriage-settlement, 
empowered him ; nor was it till the very 
night in which I was begot, which was 

! thirteen months after, that she had the least 
intimation of his design : when my father 

I happening, as you remember, to be a little 
chagrined and out of tempor, — took occa 
sion, as they lay chatting gravely in bed 



afterwards, talking over what was to come, 
— to lot her know that she must accommo- 
date he. self as well as she could to the bar- 
gain marie between them in their marriage- 
deeds ; which was to lie-in of her next 
child in the country, to balance the last 
year's journey. 

My father was a gentleman of many vir- 
tues, — but he had a strong spice of that in 
his temper, which might, or might not, add 
to the number. — 'Tis known by the name 
of Perseverance in a good cause, — and of 
Obstinacy in a bad one: of this my mother 
had so much knowledge, that she knew 
'twas to no purpose to make any remon- 
strance ; — so she e'en resolved to sit down 
quietly, and make the most of it. 



CHAP. XVIII. 

As the point was that night agreed, or 
rather determined, that my mother should 
lie-in of me in the country, she took her 
measures accordingly ; for which purpose, 
when she was three days, or thereabouts, 
gone with child, she began to cast her eyes 
upon the midwife, whom you have so often 
heard me mention ; and before the week 
was well got round, as the famous Dr. 
Manningham was not to be had, she had 
come to a final determination in her mind, 

notwithstanding there was a scientific 

operator within so near a call as eight miles 
of us, and who, moreover, had expressly 
wrote a five-shilling book upon the subject 
of midwifery, in which he had exposed, not 
only the blunders of the sisterhood itself, — 
but had likewise superadded many curious 
improvements for the quicker extraction of 
the foetus in cross-births, and some other 
cases of danger, which belay us in getting 
into the world; notwithstanding all this, 
my mother, I say, was absolutely deter- 
mined to trust her life, and mine with it, 
into no soul's hand but this old woman's 
only. — Now this I like : — When we cannot 

get at the very thing we wish, never to 

take up with the next best in degree to it. 
No; that's pitiful beyond description. — It is 
more than a week from this very day, in 
which I am now writing this book for the 
edification of the world, — which is March 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 2A 

9, 1759, — that my dear, dear Jenny, observ 
ing I looked a little grave, as she stood 
cheapening a silk of five-ond-twenty shil- 
lings a yard, — told the mercer, she wa& 
sorry she had given him so much trouble ; 
— and immediately went and bought her 
self a yard-wide stuff of ten-pence a yard 
— 'Tis the duplication of one and the same 
greatness of soul ; only, what lessened the 
honor of it somewhat in my mother's case 
was, that she could not heroine it into so 
violent and hazardous an extreme as one in 
her situation might have wished, because 
the old midwife had really some little claim 
to be depended upon, — as much, at least, as 
success could give her ; having, in the 
course of her practice of near twenty years 
in the parish, brought every mother's son 
of them into the world without any one slip 
or accident which could fairly be laid to her 
account. 

These facts, though they had their weight, 
yet did not altogether satisfy some few 
scruples and uneasinesses which hung upon 
my father's spirits in relation to this choice. 
— To say nothing of the natural workings 
of humanity and justice — or of the yearn- 
ings of parental and connubial love, all 
which prompted him to leave as little to 
hazard as possible in a case of this kind ; 
he felt himself concerned in a particu- 
lar manner, that all should go right in the 
present case ; — from the accumulated sor- 
row he lay open to, should any evil betide 
his wife and child in lying-in at Shandy- 
Hall. He knew the world judged by 

events, and would add to his afflictions in 
such a misfortune, by loading him with the 

whole blame of it. " Alas o'day ! — had 

" Mrs. Shandy (poor gentlewoman !) had 
"but her wish in going up to town just to 
" lie-in and come down again ; — which, they 
"say, she begged and prayed for upon her 

"bare knees, and which in my opinion, 

" considering the fortune which Mr. Shandy 
" got with her, — was no such mighty matter 
"to have complied with, the lady and her 
"babe might both of them have been alive 
"at this hour." 

This exclamation, my father knew, was 
unanswerable ; — and yet, it was not merely 
to shelter himself, — nor was it altogethei 
for the care of his offspring and wife that 
he seemed so extremely anxiouo aDout thi* 
3 



20 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



point; — i^y father had extensive views 

of things, and stood moreover, as he 

thought, deeply concerned in it for the 
public good, from the dread he entertained 
of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might 
be put to. 

He was very sensible that all political 
writers upon the subject had unanimously 
agreed and lamented, from the beginning 
of queen Elizabeth's reign down to his own 
time, that the current of men and money 
towards the metropolis, upon one frivolous 
errand or another, — set in so strong, — as 
to become dangerous to our civil rights, — 

though, by the bye, a current was not 

the image he took most delight in ; — a dis- 
temper was here his favorite metaphor, and 
he would run it down into a perfect alle- 
gory, by maintaining it was identically the 
6ame in the body national as in the body 
natural, where the blood and spirits were 
driven up into the head faster than they 

could find their ways down ; a stoppage 

of circulation must ensue, which was death 
in both cases. 

There was little danger, he would say, of 
losing our liberties by French politics or 

French invasions; nor was he so much 

in pain of a consumption from the mass of 
corrupted matter and ulcerated humors in 
our constitution, which he hoped was not so 
bad as it was imagined : — but he verily 
feared, that in some violent push we should 
go off, all at once, in a state-apoplexy; — 
and then he would say, The Lord have 
mercy upon us all. 

My father was never able to give the 
history of this . distemper, — without the 
remedy along with it. 

" Was I an absolute prince," he would 
say, pulling up his breeches with both his 
hands, as he rose from his arm-chair, " I 
"would appoint able judges, at every avenue 
" of my metropolis, who should take cog- 
' nizance of every fool's business who came 
"there; — and if, upon a fair and candid 
4< hearing, it appeared not of weight suffi- 
*' cient to leave his own home, and come 
u up, bag and baggage, with his wife and 

* children, farmer's sons, c^c. tyc. at his 
"oackside, they should be all sent back, 
" from constable to constable, like vagrants 
' as they were, to the place of their legal 

* se f ue mentis. By this means I should take 



"care, that my metropolis totter'd nor 
" through its own weight ; — that the head 
" be no longer too big for the body ; — that 
" the extremes, now wasted and pinn'd in, 
" be restored to their due share of nourish- 
"ment, and regain with it their natural 
" strength and beauty : — I would effectually 
" provide, That the meadows and corn-fields 
"of my dominions should laugl and sing; 
" — that good cheer and hospita ity flourish 
"once more; — and that such weight and 
" influence be put thereby into the hands of 
" the Squiralty of my kingdom, as should 
" counterpoise what I perceive my Nobility 
" are now taking from them. 

" Why are there so few palaces and gen- 
" tlemen's seats," he would ask with some 
emotion, as he walked across the room, 
" throughout so many delicious provinces 
"in France! Whence is it that the few re- 
"maining chateaus amongst them are so 
"dismantled, — so unfurnished, and in so 

" ruinous and desolate a condition 1 Be- 

" cause, Sir," (he would say) " in that king- 
"dom no man has any country-interest to 
" support : — the little interest of any kind 
" which any man has anywhere in it, is con- 
" centrated in the court, and the looks of 
" the Grand Monarch : by the sunshine of 
" whose countenance, or the clouds which 
" pass across it, every Frenchman lives or 
"dies." 

Another political reason which prompted 
my father so strongly to guard against the 
least evil accident in my mother's lying 1 -'!! 
in the country, was, That any such in- 
stance would infallibly throw a balance of 
power, too great already, into the weaker 
vessels of the gentry, in his own, or higher 

stations; which, with the many other 

usurped rights which that part of the con- 
stitution was hourly establishing, — would, 
in the end, prove fatal to the monarchica. 
system of domestic government established 
in the first creation of things by God. 

In this point he was entirely of Sir Rob- 
ert Filmer's opinion, That the plans and 
institutions of the greatest monarchies in 
the eastern parts of the wor.d, were, origin- 
ally, all stolen from that admirable' pattern 
and prototype of this household ai d paterna.. 
power; — which, for a century, ne said, and 
more, had gradually oeen degeneratii gaway 
into a mixed government: i e frrm of 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 

which, however desirable in great combina- 
tions of the species, was very trouble- 
tome in small ones, — and seldom produced 



27 



fusion. 

For all these reasons, private and public, 
put together, — my father was for having 
the man-midwife by all means; — my mo- 
ther by no means. My father begged and 
entreated she would for once recede from 
her prerogative in this matter, and suffer 
him to choose for her : — my mother, on the 
contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this 
matter, to choose for herself, — and have no 
mortal's help but the old woman's. — What 
could my father do? He was almost at his 

wit's end ; talked it over with her in all 

moods; — placed his arguments in all lights; 
— argued the matter with her like a chris- 
tian, — like a heathen, — like a husband, — 
like a father, — like a patriot, — like a man : 
— My mother answered every thing only 
like a woman ; which was a little hard upon 
her ; — for as she could not assume and fight 
jt out behind such a variety of characters, — 
'twas no fair match ; — 'twas seven to one. 
— What could my mother do] She had the 
advantage (otherwise she had been certainly 
overpowered) of a small reinforcement of 
chagrin personal at the bottom, which bore 
her up, and enabled her to dispute the affair 
with my father with so equal an advantage, 

that both sides sung Te Deum. In a 

word, my mother was to have the old woman, 
— and the operator was to have license to 
drink a bottle of wine with my father and 
my uncle Toby Shandy in the back parlor, 
— for which he was to be paid five guineas. 

I must beg leave, before I finish this chap- 
ter, to enter a caveat in the breast of my 

fair reader ; — and it is this ; not to take 

it absolutely for granted, from an unguarded 
word or two which I have dropped in it, 

"That I am a married man." — I own, 

the tender appellation of my dear, dear 
Jenny, — with some other strokes of conjugal 
Knowledge, interspersed here and there, 
might naturally enough have misled the 
most candid judge in the world into such a 
determination against me. — All I plead for 
in this case, Madam, is strict justice, and 
that you do so much of it to me as well as 
to yourself, — as not to prejudge, or receive 
*uch an impression of me, till you have 



better evidence than, I am positive, at pres- 
ent can be produced against me. — Not thai 
I can be so vain or unreasonable, Madam, aa 
to desire you should therefore think that mv 
dear, dear Jenny is my kept mistress ; — no 
— that would be flattering my character in 
the other extreme, and giving it an air of 
freedom, which, perhaps, it has no kind of 
right to. All I contend for, is the utter im- 
possibility, for some volumes, that you, or 
the most penetrating spirit upon earth, 
should know how this matter really stands. 
— It is not impossible but that my dear, 
dear Jenny ! tender as the appellation is, 

may be my child. Consider, 1 was 

born in the year eighteen. — Nor is there any 
thing- unnatural or extravagant in the suppo- 
sition, that my dear, dear Jenny may be my 

friend ! Friend ! — My friend. — Surely, 

Madam, a friendship between the two sexes 

may subsist, and be supported without 

Fy ! Mr. Shandy. — Without any thing, 
Madam, but that tender and delicious senti- 
ment which ever mixes in friendship, where 
there is a difference of sex. Let me entreat 
you to study the pure and sentimental parts 
of the best French romances; — it will 
really, Madam, astonish you to see with 
what a variety of chaste expressions this 
delicious sentiment which I have the honor 
to speak of, is dress'd out. 



CHAP. XIX. 

I would sooner undertake to explain the 
hardest problem in Geometry, than pretend 
to account for it, that a gentleman of my 
father's great good sense, — knowing-, as the 
reader must have observed him, and curious 
too in philosophy, — wise also in political 
reasoning, — and in polemical (as he will 
find) no way ignorant, — could be capable of 
entertaining a notion in his head, so out of 
the common track, — that I fear the reader, 
when I come to mention it to him, if he is 
the least of a choleric temper, will imme- 
diately throw the book by; if mercurial, he 
will laugh most heartily at it; — and if he 
is of a grave and saturnine cast, he will at 
first sight absolutely condemn as fanciful 
and extravagant; and that was in respect 
to the choice and imposition of christian 



28 LIFE AND 

nawies, tn ' r hich he thought a great deal 
more depended than what superficial minds 
were capable of conceiving*. 

His opinion in this matter was, That there 
was a strange kind of magic bias, which 
good or bad names, as he called them, irre- 
sistibly impressed upon our characters and 
conduct. 

The hero of Cervantes argued not the 
point with more seriousness, — nor had he 
more faith, — or more to say on the powers 
of necromancy in dishonoring his deeds, — 
or on Dulcinea's name, in shedding lustre 
upon them, than my father had on those of 
Trismegistus or Archimedes on the one 
hand, — or of Nyky and Simkin on the other. 
How many Caesars and Pompeys, he would 
say, by mere inspiration of the names, have 
been rendered worthy of them ! And, how 
many, he would add, are there, who might 
have done exceeding well in the world, had 
not their characters and spirits been totally 
depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing ! 

I see plainly, Sir, by your looks (or as 
the case happened) my father would say — 
that you do not heartily subscribe to this 
opinion of mine, — which, to those, he would 
add, who have not carefully sifted it to the 
bottom, — I own has an air more of fancy 

than of solid reasoning in it; and yet, 

my dear Sir, if I may presume to know 
your character, I am morally assured, I 
should hazard little in stating a case to you, 
not as a party in the dispute, — but as a 
judge, and trusting my appeal upon it to 
your own good sense and candid disquisi- 
tion in this matter; you are a person 

free from as many narrow prejudices of 
education as most men : — and, if I may pre- 
sume to penetrate farther into you, — of a 
liberality of genius above bearing down an 
opinion, merely because it wants friends. 
Your son, — your dear son, — from whose 
sweet and open temper you have so much 
to expect; — your Billy, Sir! — would you, 
for the world, have called him Judas] — 
Would you, my dear Sir, he would say, 
Wing his hand upon your breast, with the 
genteeiest address, — and in that soft and 
irresistible viano of voice which the nature 
of the argumentum ad hominem absolutely 
requires, — Would you, Sir if a Jew of a 
godfather had proposed the name for your 
shild, and offered you his purse along with 



OPINIONS 

it, would you have consented to such a 

desecration of him? O my God! he 

would say, looking up, if I know your tem- 
per right, Sir, — you are incapable of it; — 
you would have trampled upon the offer ; — 
you would have thrown tne temptation at 
the tempter's head with abhorrence. 

Your greatness of mind in this action, 
which I admire, with that generous con- 
tempt of money, which you show me in the 
whole transaction, is really noble ; — and 
what renders it more so, is the principle of 
it : — the workings of a parent's love upon 
the truth and conviction of this very hypo- 
thesis, namely, That was your son called 
Judas, — the sordid and treacherous idea, so 
inseparable from the name, would have ac- 
companied him through life like his shadow, 
and, in the end, made a miser and a rascal 
of him, in spite, Sir, of your example. 

I never knew a man able to answer this 
argument.-: — But, indeed, to speak of my 
father as he was ; — he was certainly irre- 
sistible ; — both in his orations and disputa- 
tions ; — he was born an orator ; — Qio6ihaK]a. 
— Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the 
elements of Logic and Rhetoric wero so 
blended up in him, — and, withal, he had so 
shrewd a guess at the weakness and pas- 
sions of his respondent, — that Nature 
might have stood up and said, — " This man 
" is eloquent." — In short, whether he was en 
the w T eak or the strong side of the question, 
'twas hazardous in either case to attack 
him : — and yet, 'tis strange, he had never 
read Cicero, nor Quintilian de Oratore, 
nor Isocrates, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus, 
amongst the antients ;— -nor Vossius, nor 
Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby, 
amongst the moderns; and, what is more 
astonishing, he had never in his whole life 
the least light or spark of subtilty struck 
into his mind, by one single lecture upon 
Crackenthorp or Burgersdicus or any Dutch 
logician or comm Q ntator; — he knew not so 
much as in what the difference of an argu- 
ment ad ignorantiam, and an argument 
ad hominem, consisted ; so that I well re- 
member, when he went up along with me 
to enter my name in Jesus' College in * * * *, 
— it was a matter of just wonder witn my 
worthy tutor, and two or three fellows of 
that learned society, — that a man who 
knew not so much as the names of his tools, 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



29 



should bo able to work after that fashion 
with them. 

To work with them in the best manner 
he could, was what my father was, however, 

perpetually forced upon ; for he had a 

thousand little sceptical notions of the comic 
kind to defend, — most of which notions, I 
verily believe, at first entered upon the 
footing of mere whims, and of a vive la 
Bagatelle; and as such he would make 
merry with them for half an hour or so ; 
and having- sharpened his wit upon them, 
dismiss them till another day. 

I mention this, not only as matter of hy- 
pothesis or conjecture upon the progress and 
establishment of my father's many odd 
opinions, — but as a warning to the learned 
reader against the indiscreet reception of 
such guests, who, after a free and undis- 
turbed entrance, for some years, into our 
brains, — at length claim a kind of settle- 
ment there, working sometimes like 

yeast ; — -but more generally after the man- 
ner of the gentle passion, beginning in jest, 
— but ending in downright earnest. 

Whether this was the case of the singu- 
larity of my father's notions, — or that his 
judgment, at length, became the dupe of 
his wit: — or how far, in many of his no- 
tions, he might, though odd, be absolutely 

right ; the reader, as he comes at them, 

shall decide. All that I maintain here, is, 
that in this one, of the influence of chris- 
tian names, however it gained footing, he 
was serious ; — he was all uniformity ; — he 
was systematical, and, like all systematic 
reasoners, he would move both heaven and 
earth, and twist and torture every thing in 
nature, to support his hypothesis. In a word, 
I repeat it over again, — he was serious; 
and in consequence of it, he would lose all 
kind of patience whenever he saw people, 
especially of condition, who should have 
known better, — as careless and as indifferent 
about the name they imposed upon their 
child, — or more so, than in the choice of 
Ponto or Cupid for their puppy-dog. 

This, he would say, look'd ill ; — and had, 
moreover, this particular aggravation in it, 
viz. That when once a vile name was 
wrongfully or injudiciously given, 'twas 
not like the case of a man's character, 
ti-hich, when wrong'd, might hereafter be 
cleared; and, possibly, some lime or 



other, if not in the man's life, it least n W 
his death — be, somehow or other, set 10 
rights with the world : but the injury a 
this, he would say, could never be undone, 
nay, he doubted even whether an act oi 

parliament could reach it: lie knew as 

well as you, that the legislature assumed 
a power over surnames : but for very strong 
reasons, which he could give, it had never 
yet adventured, he would say, to go a step 
farther. 

It was observable, that though my father, 
in consequence of this opinion, had, as I 
have told you, the strongest likings and 
dislikings towards certain names, — that 
there w T ere still numbers of names which 
hung so equally in the balance before him, 
that they were absolutely indifferent to 
him. Jack, Dick, and Tom, were of this 
class : these my father called neutral names ; 
— affirming of them, without a satire, That 
there had been as many knaves and fools, 
at least, as wise and good men, since the 
world began, who had indifferently borne 
them ; — so that, like equal forces acting 
against each other in contrary directions, 
he thought they mutually destroyed each 
other's effects ; for which reason, he would 
often declare, He would not give a cherry- 
stone to choose amongst them. Bob, which 
was my brother's name, was another of 
these neutral kinds of christian names, 
which operated very little either way ; and 
as my father happened to be at Epsom 
when it was given him, — he would oft- 
times thank Heaven it was no worse. An- 
drew was something like a negative quan- 
tity in algebra with him ; — 'twas worse, he 
said, than nothing, — William stood pretty 

high : Numps again was low with him : 

and Nick, he said, was the Devil. 

But of all the names in the universe, he 
had the most unconquerable aversion for 
Tristram ; — he had the lowest and most 
contemptible opinion of it of any thing in 
the world, thinking it could possibly pro- 
duce nothing in rerum natura, but what 
was extremely mean and pitiful : so that in 
the midst of a dispute on the subject, in 
which, by the bye, he was frequently in- 
volved, he would sometimes break of! 

in a sudden and spirited Eviphonema, ot 
rather Erotesis, raised a third, and some- 
times a full fifth above the key of tnc dw 
3* 



so 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



course, and demand it categorically of 

his antagonist, Whether he would take 
upon him to say, he had ever remembered, 

whether he had ever read, — or even 

whether he had ever heard tell of a man, 
called Tristram, performing any thing great 
or worth recording? — No, — he would say, 
— Tristram! — The thing is impossible. 

What could be wanting in my father but 
to have wrote a book to publish this notion 
of his to the world 1 Little boots it to the 
subtle speculatist to stand single in his 
opinions, — unless he gives them proper 
vent: — It was the identical thing which 
my father did : — for in the year sixteen, 
which was two years before I was born, he 
was at the pains of writing an express 
Dissertation simply upon the word Tris- 
tram, — showing the world, with great can- 
dor and modesty, the grounds of his great 
abhorrence to the name. 

When this story is compared with the 
title-page, — will not the gentle reader pity 
my father from his soul 1 — to see an orderly 
and well-disposed gentleman, who though 
singular, yet inoffensive in his notions, — 

b« played upon in them by cross-purposes 

to look down upon the stage, and see him 



you in it, That my mother was not a Papist. 

Papist ! you told me no such thing, Sir. 

— Madam, I beg leave to repeat it over 
again, that I told you as plain, at least, as 
words, by direct inference, could tell you 
such a thing. — Then, Sir, I must have missed 
a page. — No, Madam, — you have not missed 

a word. Then I was asleep, Sir. — My 

pride, Madam, cannot allow you that refuge. 

Then, I declare, I know nothing at all 

about the matter. — That, Madam, is the 
very fault I lay to your charge ; and, as ? 
punishment for it, I do insist upon it, that 
you immediately turn back, that is, as soon 
as you get to the next full stop, and read 
the whole chapter over again. I have im- 
posed this penance upon the lady, neither 
out of wantonness nor cruelty, but from the 
best of motives ; and therefore shall make 
her no apology for it when she returns back. 
'Tis to rebuke a vicious taste, which has 
crept into thousands besides herself, — of 
reading straight forwards, more in quest of 
the adventures than of the deep erudition 
and knowledge which a book of this cast, if 
read over as it should be, would infallibly 

impart with them. The mind should bo 

accustomed to make wise reflections, and 



baffled and overthrown in all his little sys- 1 draw curious concl 
terns and wishes ! to behold a train of events 
perpetually falling out against him, and in so 
critical and cruel a way, as if they had pur- 
posely been plann'd and pointed against 

him, merely to insult his speculations ! 

In a word, to behold such a one, in his old 
age, ill-fitted for troubles, ten times in a day 
suffering sorrow ! — ten times in a day call- 
ing the child of his prayers Tristram ! — 
Melancholy dissyllable of sound ! which, to 
his ears, was unison to Nincompoop, and 

every name vituperative under Heaven. 

By his ashes ! I swear it, — if ever malig- 
nant spirit took pleasure, or busied itself in 
traversing the purposes of mortal man, — it 
must have been here ; — and if it was not ne- 
cessary I should be born before I was chris- 
tened, I would this moment give the reader 
an account of it. 



CHAP. XX. 



s, as it goes along ; 
the habitude of which made Pliny the 
Younger affirm, "That he never read a 
" book so bad, but he drew some profit from 
"it." The stories of Greece and Rome, run 
over without this turn and application, — do 
less service, I affirm it, than the history of 
Parismus and Parismenus, or of the Seven 
Champions of England, read with it. 

But here comes my fair lady. Have 

you read over again the chapter, M idam, 
as I desired you? — You have: and did you 
not observe the passage, upon the second 

reading, which admits the inference! 

Not a word like it ! Then, Madam, be pfeased 
to ponder well the last line but one of the 
chapter, where I take upon me to say, " It 
" was necessary I should be born before I was 
"christened." Had my mother, Madam, 
been a Papist, that consequence d. ; d not 
follow.* 



* The Romish Rituals direct the bnpmjng of the 
child in cases of danger, before it is born ;— but upon 
this proviso, That some part or other of the child's 
body be seen by the baptizer but the Hectors of tht 



How could you, Madam, be so inat ia 

J Borbonne, by a deliberation held amongst them, \\tru 

|«ntive m reading the last chapter ] I told 1 10, 1733,-have enlarged the powers of tb/< midv ive* 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

It is a terrible misfortune for this same 
dook of mine, but more so to the Republic 
of Letters ; — so that my own is quite swal- 
lowed up in the consideration of it, — that 



by determining, That though no part of the child's 
body should appear, that baptism shall, neverthe- 
less, be administered to it by injection,— par le moyen 

d'une petite canulle, — Anglice, — a squirt 'tis very 

strange that St. Thomas Aquinas, who had so good a 
mechanical head, both for tying and untying the 
knots of school divinity, should, after so much pains 
bestowed upon this — give up the point at last, as a 
second La chose impossible—" Infantes in maternis 
uteris existent es (quoth St. Thomas!) baptizari pos- 
sum nullo modo."' -O Thomas! Thomas! 

If the reader has the curiosity to see the question 
upon baptism by injection, as presented to the Doctors 
of the Sorbonne, with their consultation thereupon, 
it is as follows : 

MEMOIR E PRESENTE A MESSIEURS LE8 
DOCTEURS DE SORBONNE.* 

"Un Chirurgien Accoucheur, represente a Mes- 
sieurs les Docteurs de Sorbonne, qu'il y a des cas, 
quoique tres rares, ou une mere ne scauroit accouch- 
eur, et meme ou l'enfant est tellement renferme dans 
le sein de sa mere, qu'il ne fait paroitre aucunepartie 
de son corps, ce qui seroit un cas, suivant les Rituels, 
de lui conf -rer, du moins sous condition, le bapteme. 
Le Chirurgien. qui consulte. pretend, par le moyen 
d'uns petite canulle, de pouvoir baptizer immediate- 

ment l'enfant, sans faire aucun tort a Ja mere II 

demand si ce moyen, qu'il vient de proposer, est 
permis ct 1 'gitiine, et s'il peut s'en servir dans les cas 
qu'il vient d'exposer.'' 

REPONSE. 
" Le consail estime, qui la question proposee aouffre 
de gran.les dimcultes. Les Theologiens posent d'un 
cote pour principe, que le bapteme, qui est une nais- 
snnce spirituelle, suppose une premiere naissance ; il 
faut etre ne dans le monde, pour renaitre en Jesus 
Christ, comme ila I'enseignent. S. Thomas, 3 part 
qucest. 88. artic. 11. suit cette doctrine comme une 
verite constante; Ton ne peut, dit ce S. Docteur, bap 
tiser les enfans qui sont renferme dans le seip de leurs 
meres, et S. Thomas est fonde sur ce, que les enfans 
ne sont point nis et ne peuvent etre comptes parmi 
les autres homines; d'oii il conclud, qu'ils ne peuvent 
etre l'objet d'une action exterieure pour recevoir par 
leur ministare les sacremens nicessaires au salut: 
" Pueri in maternis uteris existentes nondum prodi- 
erunt in lucem ut cum aliis hominibus vitam ducant: 
unde non possunt subjici actioni humana\ ut per 
eorum ministerium sacramenta recipiant ad salu- 
tum." Les rituels ordonnent dans la pratique ce que 
les theologiens ont etabli sur les memes matieres, et 
lis deffendent tous d'une maniere uniforme,de baptiser 
les enfans qui sont renfermes dans le sein de leurs 
meres, s'ils ne font paroitre quelque partie de leurs 
corps. Le conco.irs des theologiens, et des rituels, 
qui sont les regies des dioceses, paroit former une 
autorite qui termine !a question presente; cependant 
le conseil de conscience considerant d'un cote, que le 
raisonnement <Ip«. thiologiens est iiniquement fonde 
sur une raison de convenance, et que la daffense des 
rituels suppose que !'on ne osut baptiser immediate- 

* Vide Deventer. Pirii edit. 4to tT34. p. 366. 



31 

this self-same vile pruriency for fresh ad- 
ventures in all thing's, has got so strongly 
into our habit and humor, — and so wholly 
intent are we upon satisfying" the itnpa- 



ment les enfans ainsi renfermes dans le sein de leurs 
meres, ce qui est con t re la supposition presente; et 
d'un autre cote, considerant que les memes theolo- 
giens enseignent, que I'on ]>eut l -isquer les sacremens 
que Jesus Christ a etablis comme des moyens faciles, 
mais nacessaires, pour sanctifier les hommes; et 
d'ailleurs estimant, que les enfans renfermes dans le 
sein de leurs meres, pourroient etre capables de salut, 
parcequ'ils sont capsbles de damnation ;— pour cas 
considerations, et en cgard a l'exposa, suivant lequel 
on assure avoir trouve un moyen certain de baptisei 
ces enfans ainsi renfermes, sans faire aucun tort a la 
mere, le Conseil estiine que Ton pourroit se servir du 
moyen propose, dans la confiance qu'il a, que Dieu 
n'a point laisse ces sortes d 'en fans sans aucuns se- 
cours, et supposant, comme il est expose, que le moyen 
dont il s'agit est propre a leur procurer le bapteme • 
cependant comme il s'agiroit, en autorisant la pra 
tique proposee, de changer une r.'gle univr rsellement 
etablie, le Conseil croit que celui qui consulte doit 
s'addresser a son eveque, et a qu'il il appartient de 
juger de l'utilite, et du danger du moyen propose e v . 
comme, sous le bon plaisir de l'eveque, le Conseil es- 
time qu'il faudroit recourir au Pape, que a le droit 
d'expliquer les regies de l'eglise, et d'y d6roger dans le 
cas, ou la loi ne scauroit obliger, quelque sage et 
quelque utile que paroisse la maniere de baptiser dont 
il s'agit, le Conseil ne pourroit I'approuver sans le 
concoursde ces deux autorit>s. On conseile au moins 
a celui qui consulte, de s'addresser a son eveque, et 
de lui faire part de la presente decision, arm que, si le 
prelat entre dans les raisons sur lesquelles les doc- 
teurs soussign's .s'appuyent, il puisse etre autorise, 
dans le cas de necessity ou il risqueroit trop d'atten- 
dre que la permission flit demandee et accordee d'em- 
ployer le moyen qu'il propose si a vantage ux au salut 
de l'enfant. Au reste, le Conseil, en estimant que 
Ton pourroit s'en servir, croit cependant, que Si les 
enfans dont il s'agit, venoient au monde, contre Pes- 
perancedeceuxqui se seroient servis du meme moyen, 
il seroit necessaire de les baptiser sous condition ; et 
en celale Conseil se conforme a tous les rituels, qui en 
autorisant le bapteme d'un enfant qui fait paroitre 
quelque partie de son corps, enjoignent neantmoins, 
et ordonnent de le baptiser sous condition, s'il vient 
heureusement au monde. 

Delibere en Sorbonne, le 10 Avril, 1733. 

A. LE MOYNE. 

L. DE ROMIGNY. 

DE MARCILLY. 

Mr. Tristram Shandy's compliments to Messrs. L» 
Moyne, De Romigny, and De Marcilly ; rcj>es they all 
rested well the night after so tiresome a consultation. 
— He begs to know, whether, after the ceremony of 
marriage, and before that of consummation, the bap 
tizingall the Homunculi at once, slapdash, by injection, 
would not be a shorter and safer cut still ; on condi 
tion, as above, That if the Homun-uli do well, and 
come safe into the world after this, that each and 
every of them shall be baptized again (sous condition) 
— And provided, in the second place, That the thing 
can be done, which Mr. Shandy apprehends it may 
par le moyen d'une petite canulle, and sans /atit 
aucun tort au pere? 



32 



LIFE AiND 



tience of our concupiscence that way, — that 
nothing - but the gross and more carnal parts 
of a composition will go down : — the subtle 
hints and sly communications of science fly 

off, like spirits, upwards, the heavy moral 

escapes downwards; and both the one and 
the other are as much lost to the world, as 
if they were still left in the bottom of the 
ink-horn. 

I wish the male-reader has not passed by 
many a one, as quaint and curious as this 
one, in which the female-reader has been 
detected. I wish it may have its effects; — 
and that all good people, both male and fe- 
male, from example, may be taught to think 
as well as read. 



CHAP. XXI. 

1 wonder what's all that noise, and 

running backwards and forwards for, above 
stairs \ quoth my father, addressing himself, 
after an hour and a half's silence, to my 

uncle Toby, who, you must know, was 

sitting on the opposite side of the fire, smok- 
ing his social pipe all the time, in mute 
contemplation of a new pair of black plush- 
breeches which he had got on : — What can 
they be doing, brother] — quoth my father, — 
we can scarce hear ourselves talk. 

I think, replied my uncle Toby, taking his 
pipe from his mouth, and striking the head of 
it two or three times upon the nail of his 

left thumb as he began his sentence, 1 

think, says he, but to enter rightly into 

my uncle Toby's sentiments upon this mat- 
ter, you must be made to enter first a little 
into his character, the outlines of which I 
shall just give you, and then the dialogue 
between him and my father will go on as 
well again. 

Pray, what was that man's name, — for I 
write in such a hurry, I have no time to re- 
collect or look for it, who first made the 

observation, " That there was great incon- 
u stancy in our air and climate V* Whoever 
he was, 'twas a just and good observation 
in him. — Bat the corollary drawn from it, 
namely, " That it is this which has furnish- 
" ed us with such a variety of odd and whim- 
"sical characters;'" — that was not his; — it 
was found out by another man, at least a 
century anc a half after him. Then again, 



OPINIONS 

— That this copious store-house of origina 
materials, is the true and natural cause that 
our comedies are so much better than those 
of France, or any others that either have, or 

can be wrote upon the Continent: that 

discovery was not fully made till about the 
middle of King William's reign, — when the 
great Dryden, in writing one of his long 
prefaces (if I mistake not) most fortunately 
hit upon it. Indeed, toward the latter end 
of Queen Anne, the great Addison began 
to patronize the notion, and more fully ex- 
plained it to the world in one or two of his 
Spe< tators ; — but the discovery was not his. 
— Then, fourthly and lastly, That this 
strange irregularity in our climate, produc- 
ing so strange an irregularity in our charac- 
ters, doth thereby, in some sort, make us 

amends, by giving us somewhat to make us 
merry with when the weather will not suffer 
us to go out of doors ; — that observation is 
my own; — and was struck out by me this 
very rainy day, March 26, 1759, and betwixt 
the hours of nine and ten in the morning. 

Thus — thus, my fellow-laborers and as- 
sociates in this great harvest of our learn- 
ing, now ripening before our eyes ; thus it 
is, by slow steps of casual increase, that 
our knowledge, physical, metaphysical, phy- 
siological, polemical, nautical, mathemati- 
cal, enigmatical, technical, biographical, 
romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with 
fifty other branches of it (most of 'em end- 
ing, as these do, in ical,) have, for these two 
last centuries and more, gradually been 
creeping upwards towards that 'a*/^ of their 
perfections, from which, if we may form a 
conjecture from the advances of these last 
seven years, we cannot possibly be far off. 

When that happens, it is to be hoped, it 
will put an end to all kind of- writings 
whatsoever ; — the want of all kind of writ- 
ing will put an end to all kind of reading; — 
and that in time, as war begets poverty; 
poverty peace, — must, in course, put an end 

to all kind of knowledge, — and then 

we shall have all to begin over again ; or, 
in other words, be exactly where we 
started. 

Happy! thrice happy times! 1 

only wish that the era of my begetting, as 
well as the mode and manner of it, had been 

a little alter'd, or that it could have 

been put off, with any convenience to m% 



father or mother, for some twenty or five- 
and-twenty years longer, when a man in 
the literary world might have stood some 
chanee. 

But I forget my uncle Toby, whom all 
this while we have left knocking the ashes 
->ut of his tobacco-pipe. 

His humor was of that particular species 
which does honor to our atmosphere ; and I 
ehould have made no scruple of ranking him 
amongst one of the first-rate productions of 
it, had not there appeared too many strong 
lines in it of a family likeness, which showed 
that he derived the singularity of his tem- 
per more from blood, than either wind or 
water, or any modifications or combinations 
of them whatever ; and I have, therefore, 
oftentimes wondered, that my father, though 
I believe he had his reasons for it, upon his 
observing some tokens of eccentricity in 
my course when I was a boy, — should never 
once endeavor to account for them^ in this 
way; for all the Shandy Family were of an 

original character throughout : 1 mean 

the males, — the females had no character 
at all, — except, indeed, my great-aunt Di- 
nah, who, about sixty years ago, was mar- 
ried and got with child by the coachman ; 
for which my father, according to his hy- 
pothesis of christian names, would often 
say, She might thank her godfathers and 
godmothers. 

It will seem very strange, and I would 

as soon think of dropping a riddle in the 
reader's way, which is not my interest to 
do, as set him upon guessing how it could 
come to pass, that an event of this kind, so 
many years after it had happened, should 
be reserved for the interruption of the peace 
and unity, which otherwise so cordially sub- 
sisted, between my father and my uncle 
Toby. One would have thought that the 
whole force of the misfortune should have 
spent and wasted itself in the family at 
first, — as is generally the case. — But no- 
thing ever wrought with our family after 
the ordinary way. Possibly at the very 
lime this happened, it might have some- 
thing else to afflict it; and as afflictions are 
sent down for our good, and that as this had 
never done the Shandy Family any good at 
all, it might lie waiting till apt times and 
circumstances should give it an opportunity 

(jg discharge its office. Observe, I deter- 

E 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 33 

mine nothing upon this. My way is ever 

to point out to the curious, different tracts 
of investigation, to come at the first springs 
of the events I tell ; — not with a pedantic 
Fescue, — or in the decisive manner of Taci- 
tus, who outwits himself and his reader; — 
but with the officious humility of a heart 
devoted to the assistance merely of the in- 
quisitive: — to them I write, and by 

them I shall be read, if any such read- 
ing as this could be supposed to hold out sc 
long, — to the very end of the world. 

Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was 
thus reserved for my father and uncle, is 
undetermined by me. But how and in 
what direction it exerted itself so as to be- 
come the cause of dissatisfaction between 
them, after it began to operate, is what I 
am able to explain with great exactness, 
and is as follows : 

My uncle, Toby Shandy, Madam, was 
a gentleman, who, with the virtues which 
usually constitute the character of a man 

of honor and rectitude, possessed one in 

a very eminent decree, which is seldom or 
never put into the catalogue ; and that was 
a most extreme and unparallel'd modesty 

of nature ; though I correct the word 

nature, for this reason, that I may not pre- 
judge a point which must shortly come to 
a hearing, and that is, Whether this mod- 
esty of his was natural or acquired ] 

Whichever way my uncle Toby came by 
it, 'twas nevertheless modesty in the truest 
sense of it ; and that is, Madam, not in re- 
gard to words, for he was &o unhappy as to 
nave very little choice in them, — but to 

things; and this kind of modesty so 

possessed him, and it arose to such a height 
in him, as almost to equal, if such a thing 
could be, even the modesty of a woman : 
that female nicety, Madam, and ,nward 
cleanliness of mind and fancy, in your sex, 
which makes you so much the awe of ours. 

You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle 
Toby had contracted all this from this very 
source ; — that he had spent a great part of 
his time in converse with your sex; and 
that, from a thorough knowledge of you, 
and the force of imitation which such fair 
examples render irresistible, he* had ao 
quired this amiable turn of mind. 

I wish I could say so; — for unless it waa 
with his sister-in-law, mv father's wife mm 



31 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



rm mother, my uncle Toby scarce ex- 
changed three words with the sex in as 
many years. — No ; he got it, Madam, by a 

blow. A blow ! Yes, Madam, it was 

owing to a blow from a stone, broke off by 
a ball from the parapet of a horn- work at 
the siege of Namur, which struck full upon 
my uncle Toby's groin. — Which way could 
that effect it 1— The story of that, Madam, 
is long and interesting ; — but it would be 
running my history all upon heaps to give 
it you here. 'Tis for an episode hereaf- 
ter; and every circumstance relating to it, 
in its proper place, shall be faithfully laid 
before you. — Till then, it is not in my pow- 
er to give farther light into this matter, or 

say more than what I have said already, 

That my uncle Toby was a gentleman of 
unparallel'd modesty, which happening to 
be somewhat subtilized and rarefied by the 

constant heat of a little family pride, 

they both so wrought together within him 
that he could never bear to hear the affair 
of my aunt Dinah touch'd upon, but with 

• the greatest emotion. The least hint of 

it was enough to make the blood fly into 
his face; — but when my father enlarged 
upon the story in mixed companies, which 
the illustration of his hypothesis frequently 

-obliged him to do, — the unfortunate blight 
of one of the fairest branches of the fam- 
ily, would set my uncle Toby's honor and 
modesty o'hleeding; and he would often 
take my father aside, in the greatest con- 
cern imaginable, to expostulate and tell 
him, he would give him any thing in the 
world, only to let the story rest. 

My father, I believe, had the truest love 

and tenderness for my uncle Toby, that 

•ever one brother bore towards another ; and 

would have done any thing in nature, which 

• one brother in reason could have desir'd of 
another, to have made my uncle Toby's 
heart easy in this, or any other point. But 
tnis lay out of his power. 

My father, as I told you, was a phi- 
losopher in grain, — speculative, — system- 
atical; — and my aunt Dinah's affair was a 
matter of as much consequence to him, as 
the retrogradation of the planets to Coper- 
nic'js: — the backslidings of Venus in her 
or hit fortified the Copernican system, called 
** after his name; and the backslidings of 
aiv arri Dinah in her orbit, did the same 



service in establishing my father's systen*. 
which, I trust, will for ever hereafter he 
called the Shandean System after his. 

In any other family-dishonor, my father, 
I believe, had as nice a sense of shame as 

any man whatever ; and neither ho, noi 

I dare say, Copernicus, would have divul- 
ged the affair in either case, or have taken 
the least notice of it to the world, but for 
the obligation they owed, as they thought, 
to truth. — Amicus Plato, — my father would 
say, construing the words to my uncle 
Toby as he went along ; — Amicus Plato, — ' 
that is, Dinah was my aunt ; — sed magis 
arnica Veritas, but Truth is my sister. 

This contrariety of humors betwixt my 
father and my uncle, was the source of 
many a fraternal squabble. The one could 
not bear to hear the tale of family disgrace 

recorded ; and the other would scarce 

ever let a day pass to an end without some 
hint at it. 

For God's sake, my uncle Toby would 

cry, and for my sake, and for all our 

sakes, my dear brother Shandy, — do let this 
story of our aunt's and her ashes sleep m 
peace. — How can you, — how can you have 
so little feeling and compassion for the 

character of our family ? What is the 

character of a family to an hypothesis'? my 

father would reply. Nay, if you come to 

that, — what is the life of a family 1 The 

life of a family — my uncle Toby would say, 
throwing himself back in his arm-chair, and 
lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one leg. 

Yes, the life, my father would say, 

maintaining his point. How many thou- 
sands of 'em are there, every year that 
comes, cast away, (in all civilized countries 

at least) and considered as nothing but 

common air in competition of an hypothesis ! 
In my plain sense of things, my uncle To- 
by would answer, every such instance 

is downright Murder, let who will commit 

it. There lies your mistake, my fathei 

would reply; for, in Foro Scienlia, 

there is no such thing as Murder ; 'tii 

only Death, brother. 

My uncle Toby would never offer to an- 
swer this by any other kind of argument 
than that of whistling half a dozen bars of 

Lillebullero. You must know it was the 

usual channel through which his passions 
got vept, when anv thing shocked or Eur- 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 



35 



prised him: but especially when any 

thing 1 , which he deem'd very absurd, was 
oifered. 

As not one of our logical writers, nor any 
of the commentators upon them, that I re- 
member, have thought proper to give a 
name to this particular species of argument, 
— I here take the liberty to do it myself, for 
two reasons : first, That, in order to prevent 
all contusion in disputes, it may stand as. 
much distinguished for ever, from every 

other species of argument as the Argu- 

mentum ad Vericundiam, ex Absurdo, ex 
Fortiori, or any other argument whatso- 
ever ; — and, secondly, That it may be said 
by my children's children, when my head is 
laid to rest, that their learn'd grand- 
father's head had been busied to as much 
purpose once, as other people's. — That he 
had invented a name, — and generously 
thrown it into the Treasury of the Ars Lo- 
gica, for one of the most unanswerable ar- 
guments in the whole science ; and, if the 
end of disputation is more to silence than 
convince, — they may add, if they please, — 
to one of the best arguments too. 

I do therefore, by these presents, strictly 
cider and command, That it be known and 
distinguished by the name and title of the 
Argumentum Fistulatorium, and no other ; 
— and that it rank hereafter with the Ar- 
gumentum Baculinum and the Argumen- 
tum ad Crumenam, and for ever hereafter 
be treated of in the same chapter. 

As for the Argumentum Tripodium, 
which is never used but by the woman 
against the man ; — and the Argumentum 
ad Rem, which, contrariwise, is made use 
of by the man only against the woman : — 
as these two are enough in conscience for 

one lecture ; and moreover, as the one 

is the best answer to the other, — let them 
.ikewise be kept apart, and be treated of in 
a place by themselves. 



CHAP. XXII. 

The learned Bishop Hall, I mean the fa 
mous Dr. Joseph Hall, who was Bishop of 
Exeter in King James the First's reign, 
tells us in one of his Decades, at the end 
of his Divine Art of Meditation, imprinted 



in London, in the year 1(110, by John Boo! 
dwelling in Aldersgate-street, "Thai, it is 
"an abominable thing for a man to coi:i- 

"mend himself:" and I really think it 

is so. 

And yet on the other hand, when a thing 
is executed in a masterly kind of a fashion, 
which thing is not likely to be found out ; — 
I think it is full as abominable, that a man 
should lose the honor of it, and go out of 
the world with the conceit of it rotting in 
his head. 

This is precisely my situation. 

For in this long digression which I was 
accidentally led into, as in all my digres- 
sions (one only excepted) there is a master- 
stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which 
has all along, I fear, been overlooked by my 
reader, — not for want of penetration in him, 
— but because 'tis an excellence seldom 
looked for, or expected indeed, in a digres- 
sion : — and it is this : That, though my di- 
gressions are all fair, as you observe, — and 
that I fly off from what I am about, as far, 
and as often too, as any writer in Great 
Britain, — yet I constantly take care to order 
affairs so, that my main business does not 
stand still in my absence. 

I was just going, for example, to have 
given you the great outlines of my uncle 
Toby's most whimsical character: — when 
my aunt Dinah and the coachman came 
across us, and led us a vagary some mil- 
lions of miles into the very heart of the plan- 
etary system : notwithstanding all this, you 
perceive that the drawing of my uncle 
Toby's character went on gently all the 
time; — not the great contours of it, — that 
was impossible, — but some familiar strokes 
and faint designations of it, were here 
and there touch'd on, as we went along, 
so that you are much better acquainted 
with my uncle Toby now than you was 
before. 

By this contrivance, the machinery of my 
work is of a species by itself; two contrary 
motions are introduced into it, and recon- 
ciled, which were thought to be at variance 
with each other. In a word, my work is 
digressive, and it is progressive too, — and 
at the same time. 

This, Sir, is a very different stcry from 
that of the earth's moving round her axis 
in her diurnal rotation, with her Diogrcoa 



36 LIFE AND 

in ner elliptic orbit, which brings about the 
year, and constitutes that variety and vicis- 
situde of seasons we enjoy ; — though I own 
it suggested the thought, — as I believe the 
greatest of our boasted improvements and 
discoveries have come from such trifling 
hints 

Digressions, incontestably, are the sun- 
shine , — they are the life, the soul of read- 
ing!- -take them out of this book, for in- 
stance, you might as well take the book 
along with them ; — one cold eternal winter 
would reign in every page of it; restore them 
to the writer; — he steps forth like a bride- 
groom, — bids All-hail; brings in variety, 
and forbids the appetite to fail. 

All the dexterity is in the good cookery and 
management of them, so as to be not only 
for the advantage of the reader, but also of' 
the author, whose distress in this matter is 
truly pitiable : for if he begins a digression, 
— from that moment, I observe, his whole 
work stands stock still ; — and if he goes on 
with his main work, then there is an end 
of his digression. 

This is vile work. — For which reason, 

from the beginning of this, you see, I have 
constructed the main work, and the adven- 
titious parts of it, with such intersections, 
and have so complicated and involved the 
digressive and progressive movements, one 
wheel within another, that the whole ma- 
chine, in general, has been kept a-going; — 
and, what's more, it shall be kept a-going 
these forty years, if it pleases the fountain 
of health to bless me so long with life and 
good spirits. 



chap. xxnr. 

I have a strong propensity in me to begin 
this chapter very nonsensically ; and I will 
not balk my fancy ; — accordingly I set off 
thus: 

If the fixture of Momus's glass in the 
nuiiian breast, according to the proposed 
emendation of that arch-critic, had taken 

place, first, This foolish consequence 

would certainly have followed : — That the 
very wisest and very gravest of us all, in 
one coin or other, must have paid window- 
icteney everv dav of our lives. 



OPINIONS 

And, secondly, That had the said glass 
been there set up, nothing more would have 
been wanting, in order to have taken a 
man's character, but to have taken a chaii 
and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical 
bee-hive, and look'd in, — viewed the soul 
stark naked ; — observed all her motions, — 
her machinations; — traced all her maggota 
from their first engendering to their crawl- 
ing forth ; — watched her loose in her frisks, 
her gambols, her caprices ; and after some 
notice of her more solemn deportment, con- 
sequent upon such frisks, &c. then 

taken your pen and ink, and set down no- 
thing but what you had seen, and could have 
sworn to. — But this is an advantage not to be 
had by the biographer in this planet ; — in the 
planet Mercury (belike) it may be so ; if 

not, better still for him ; for there, the 

intense heat of the country, which is proved 
by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, 
to be more than equal to that of red-hot iron, 
— must, I think, long ago have vitrified the 
bodies of the inhabitants (as the efficient 
cause) to suit them for the climate (which 
is the final cause); so that betwixt them 
both, all the tenements of their souls, from 
top to bottom, may be nothing else, for aught 
the soundest philosophy can show to the con- 
trary, but one fine transparent body of clear 
glass (bating the umbilical knot) — so that, 
till the inhabitants grow old and tolerably 
wrinkled, whereby the rays of light, in pass- 
ing through them, become so monstrously 

refracted, or return reflected from their 

surfaces in such transverse lines to the eye, 
that a man cannot be seen through, — his 
soul might as well, unless for mere cere- 
mony, or the trifling advantage which the 
umbilical point gave her, — might, upon all 
other accounts, I say, as well play the fool 
out o'doors as in her own house. 

But this, as I said above, is not the case 
of the inhabitants of this earth : — our minds 
shine not through the body, — but are wrapt 
up here in a dark covering of uncrystal- 
lized flesh and blood ; so that, if we would 
come to the specific characters of them, we 
must so some other way to work. 

Many, in good truth, are the ways which 
human wit has been forced to take, to do this 
thing with exactness. 

Some, for instance, draw all their charac- 
ters with wind-instruments. — Virgil takes 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 



3 



notice of that way in the affair of Dido and 
./Eneas : — but it is as fallacious as the breath 
of fame ; — and, moreover, bespeaks a nar- 
row genius. I am not ignorant that the 
Italians pretend to a mathematical exact- 
ness in their designations of one particular 
sort of character among them, from the 
forte or piano of a certain wind-instrument 
they use, — which they say is infallible. — I 
dare not mention the name of the instru- 
ment in this place ; 'tis sufficient we have 
it amongst us, — but never think of making 
a drawing by it : — this is enigmatical, and in- 
tended to be so, at least ad populum : — and 
therefore, I beg, Madam, when you come 
heie, that you read on as fast as you can, 
and never stop to make any inquiry about it. 

There are others again, who will draw a 
man's character from no other helps in the 
world, but merely from his evacuations ; — 
but this often gives a very incorrect outline, 
— unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his 
repletions too; and by correcting one draw- 
ing from the other, compound one good 
figure out of them both. 

I should have no objection to this method, 
but that I think it must smell too strong 
of the lamp, — and be render'd still more 
operose, by forcing you to have an eye to 

the rest of his non-naturals. Why the 

most natural actions of a man's life should 
be called his non-naturals, — is another 
question. 

There are others, fourthly, who disdain 
every one of these expedients; — not from 
any fertility of their own, but from the va- 
rious ways of doing it, which they have bor- 
rowed from the honorable devices which 
he Pentagraphic Brethren* of the brush 
nave shown in taking copies. — These, you 
must know, are your great historians. 

One of these you will see drawing a full- 
Jength character against the light : — that's 
illiberal, — dishonest, — and hard upon the 
character of the man who sits. 

Others, to mend the matter, will make a 
drawing of you in the Camera; — that is 
nost unfair of all, because there you are 
sure to be represented in some of your 
most ridiculous attitudes. 

To avoid all and every one of these er- 



* Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and 
Pictures mechanically, and in any proportion. 



rors in giving you my uncle Toby's charaa 
ter, I am determined to draw it by no me- 
chanical help whatever; nor shall my 

pencil be guided by any one wind-instru- 
ment which ever was blown upon, either on 
this, or on the other bide of the Alps; — noj 
will I consider eithei his repletions or his 
discharges, — or touch upon his non-naturals; 
but in a word, I will draw my uncle Toby's 
character from his Hobby-Horse. 



CHAP. XXIV. 

If I was not morally sure that tne reader 
must be out of all patience for my uncle 
Toby's character, — I would here previously 
have convinced him that there is no instru- 
ment so fit to draw such a thing with, as 
that which I have pitch'd upon. 

A man and his Hobby-Horse, though I 
cannot say that they act and re-act exactly 
after the same manner in which the soul 
and body do upon each other ; yet, doubtless, 
there is a communication between them of 
some kind ; and my opinion rather is, that 
there is something in it more of the man- 
ner of electrified bodies; — and that, by 
means of the heated parts of the rider, 
which come immediately into contact with 
the back of the Hobby-Horse — by long 
journeys and much friction, it so happens 
that the body of the rider is at length filPd 
as full of Hobby-Horsical matter as it can 

hold ; so that if you are able to give but 

a clear description of the nature of the one, 
you may form a pretty exact notion of the 
genius and character of the other. 

Now the Hobby-Horse, which my uncle 
Toby always rode upon, was, in my opinion, 
a Hobby-Horse well worth giving a de- 
scription of, if it was only upon the score of 
his great singularity; — for you might have 
travelled from York to Dover, — from Dover 
to Penzance in Cornwall, and from Pen 
zance to York back again, and net hav<* 
seen such another upon the road ; or if you 
had seen such a one, whatever haste you 
had been in, you must infallibly have stoppM 
to have taken a view of him. Indeed, the 
gait and figure of him was so strange, and 
so utterly unlike was he, from his head tc 
his tail, to any one of the whole suedes. 



38 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



that it was how and then made a matter of 
dispute, — whether it was really a Hobby- 
IIorse or no: but as the philosopher would 
use no other argument to the sceptic, who 
disputed with him against the reality of 
motion, save that of rising up upon his legs, 
and walking across the room ; — so would 
my uncle Toby use no other argument to 
prove his Hobby-Horse was a Hobby- 
Horse indeed, but by getting upon his back 
and riding him about ; — leaving the world 
after that to determine the point as it 
thought fit. 

In good truth, my uncle Toby mounted 
him with so much pleasure, and he carried 
my uncle Toby so well, — that he troubled 
his head very little with what the world 
either said or thought about it. 

It is now high time, however, that I give 
vou a description of him:' — but to go on 
regularly, I only beg you will give me leave 
to acquaint you first, how my uncle Toby 
came by him. 



CHAP. XXV. 

The wound in my uncle Toby's groin, 
which he received at the siege of Namur, 
rendering him unfit for the service, it was 
thought expedient he should return to En- 
gland, in order, if possible, to be set to 
rights. 

He was four years totally confined, — 
part of it to his bed, and all of it to his 
room ; and in the course of his cure, which 
was all that time in hand, suffer'd unspeak- 
able miseries, — owing to a succession of 
exfoliations from the os pubis, and the out- 
ward edge of that part of the coxendix, 

called the os illium ; both which bones 

were dismally crush'd, as mucji by the 
irregularity of the stone, which I told you 
was broke off the parapet, — as by its size, — 
(though it was pretty large) which inclined 
the surgeon all along to think, that the 
great injury which it had done my uncle 
Toby's groin, was more owing to the gravity 



of the stone itself, than to the projectile 
force of it ; — which he would often tell him 
was a great happiness. 

My father at that time was just begin- 
ning business in London, and had taken a 
house; — and as the truest friendship and 
cordiality subsisted between the two bro- 
thers, — and that my father thought my un- 
cle Toby could nowhere be so well nursed 
and taken care of as in his own house, — 
he assign'd him the best apartment in it ; — 
and, what was a much more sincere mark 
of his affection still, he would never suffer 
a friend or an acquaintance to step into the 
house on any occasion, but he would take 
him by the hand, and lead him up stairs to 
see his brother Toby, and chat an hour by 
his bed-side. 

The history of a soldier's wound beguiles 
the pain of it ; — my uncle's visitors at least 
thought so ; and in their daily calls upon 
him, from the courtesy arising out of that 
belief, they would frequently turn the dis- 
course to that subject — and from that sub- 
ject the discourse would generally roll on 
to the siege itself. 

These conversations were infinitely kind ; 
and my uncle Toby received great relief 
from them, and would have received much 
more, but that they brought him into some 
unforeseen perplexities, which, for three 
months together, retarded his cure greatly ; 
and if he had not hit upon an expedient to 
extricate himself out of them, I verily be- 
lieve they would have laid him in his grave. 

What these perplexities of my uncle 

Toby were, 'tis impossible for you to 

guess : — if you could, — I should blush ; not 
as a relation, — not as a man, — nor even as 
a woman, — but I should blush as an author ; 
inasmuch as I set no small store by my- 
self upon this very account, that my reader 
has never yet been able to guess at any 
thing : and in this, Sir, I am of so nice and 
singular a humor, that if I thought you 
was able to form the least judgment, or 
probable conjecture to yourself, of what 
was to come in the next page, — I would 
tear it out of my book. 



THK 

LIFE AND OPINIONS 

OF 

GENTLEMAN. 



CHAP. I. 

I HAVE begun a new book, on purpose 
that I might have room enough to explain 
the nature of the perplexities in which my 
uncle Toby was involved, from the many 
discourses and interrogations about the 
siege of Namur, where he received his 
wound. 

I must remind the reader, in case he has 
read the history of King William's wars; 
— but if he has not, — I then inform him, 
that one of the most memorable attacks in 
that siege, was that which was made by 
the English and Dutch upon the point of 
the advanced counter-scarp, between the 
gate of St. Nicholas, which inclosed the 
great sluice or water-stop, where the En- 
glish were terribly exposed to the shot of 
the counter-guard and demi-bastion of St, 
Roch: the issue of which hot dispute, in 
three words, was this: That the Dutch 
lodged themselves upon the counter-guard, 
— and that the English made themselves 
masters of the covered way before St. Nich- 
olas-gate, notwithstanding the gallantry of 
the French officers, who exposed themselves 
upon the glacis sword in hand. 

As this was the principal attack of which 
my uncle Toby was an eye-witness at Na- 
mur, the army of the besiegers being 

cut off, by the confluence of the Maes and 
Sambres, from seeing much of each other's 
operations, my uncle Toby was gene- 
rally more eloquent and particular in his 
account of it; and the many perplexities 
ne was in, arose out of the almost insur- 
mountable difficulties he found in telling his 
6tory intelligibly, and giving such clear 
idfMs of the differences and distinctions be- 
tween tne scarp and counter-scarp, — the 



glacis and covered way, — the ha If- moon 
and ravelin, — as to make his companv 
fully comprehend where and what he was 
about 

Writers themselves are too apt to con 
found these terms ; so that you will the less 
wonder, if in his endeavors to explain them, 
and in opposition to many misconceptions, 
that my uncle Toby did oft-times puzzle his 
visitors, and sometimes himself too. 

To speak the truth, unless the company 
my father led up-stairs were tolerably clear- 
headed, or my uncle Toby was in one of his 
explanatory moods, 'twas a difficult thing, 
do what he could, to keep the discourse free 
from obscurity. 

What rendered the account of this affair 
the more intricate to my uncle Toby was 
this, — that in the attack of the counterscarp, 
before the gate of St Nicholas, extending 
itself from the bank of the Maes quite 
up the great water-stop, — the ground was 
cut and cross-cut with such a multitude of 
dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all 
sides, — and he would get so sadly bewil- 
dered, and set fast amongst them, that fre- 
quently he could neither get backwards nor 
forwards to save his life ; and was oft-times 
obliged to give up the attack upon that verv 
account only. 

These perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle 
Toby Shandy more perturbations than you 
would imagine ; and as my father's kind- 
ness to him was continually dragging up 

fresh friends and fresh inquirers, he had 

but a very uneasy task of it. 

No doubt, my uncle Toby had great corn 
mand of himself, — and could guard appear- 
ances, I believe, as well as most men , - 
yet, any one may imagine, that when xio 
could not retreat out of the ravelin withoui 



40 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



jeretting into the half-moon, or get out of 
the covered way without falling- down the 
counter-scarp, nor cross the dyke without 
danger of slipping- into the ditch, but that 
he must have fretted and fumed inwardly : 
— He did so; — and the little and hourly 
vexations, which may seem trifling- and of 
no account to the man who has not read 
Hippocrates ; yet, whoever has read Hip- 
pocrates, or Dr. James Mackenzie, and has 
considered well the effects which the pas- 
sions and affections of the mind have upon 
the dig-estion — (Why not of a wound as 
well as of a dinner'?) — may easily conceive 
what sharp paroxysms and exacerbations of 
his wound my uncle Toby must have un- 
dergone upon that score only. 

— My uncle Toby could not philosophize 
upon it; — 'twas enough he felt it was so: — 
and having sustained the pain and sorrows 
of it for three months together, he was 
resolved, some way or other, to extricate 
nimself. 

He was one morning lying upon his back 
in his bed, the anguish and nature of the 
wound upon his groin suffering him to lie 
in no other position, when a thought came 
into his head, that if he could purchase such 
a thing, and have it pasted down upon a 
board, as a large map of the fortification of 
the town and citadel of Namur, with its 
environs, it might be a means of giving him 
ease. — I take notice of his desire to have 
the environs along with the town and cita- 
del, for this reason, — because my uncle To- 
by's wound was got in one of the traverses, 
about thirty toises from the returning angle 
of the trench, opposite to the salient angle 

of the demi-bastion of St. Roch ; so that 

he was pretty confident he could stick a pin 
upon the identical spot of ground where he 
Ivas standing when the stone struck him. 

All this succeeded to his wishes; and not 
only freed him from a world of sad explana- 
tions, but, in the end, it proved the happy 
means, as you will read, of procuring my 
uncle Toby his Hobby-Horse. 



CHAP. II. 

There is nothing so foolish, when you 
are at the expense of making an entertain- 
ment of this kind, as to order things so 



badly, as to let your critics and gentry of 
refined taste run it down : nor is there any 
thing so likely to make them do it, as that 
of leaving them out of the party, or, what 
is full as offensive, of bestowing your at- 
tention upon the rest of your guests in so 
particular a way, as if there was no such 
thing as a critic (by occupation) at table. 

1 guard against both ; for, in the 

first place, I have left half a dozen places 
purposely open for them ; — and in the next 
place, I pay them all court. — Gentlemen, I 
kiss your hands. I protest, no company 
could give me half the pleasure; — by my 

soul, I am glad to see you. 1 beg only 

you will make no strangers of yourselves, 
but sit down, without ceremony, and fall 
on heartily. 

I said I had left six places, and I was on 
the point of carrying my complaisance so 
far as to have left a seventh open for them, 
— and in this very spot I stand on; but 
being told by a critic (though not by occu- 
pation — but by nature) that T had acquitted 
myself well enough, I shall fill it up direct- 
ly, hoping, in the mean time, that I shall 
be able to make a great deal of more room 
next year. 

How, in the name of wonder ! 

could your uncle Toby, who, it seems, was 
a military man, and whom you have repre- 
sented as no fool, be at the same time 

such a confused, pudding-headed, muddle- 
headed fellow, as — Go look. 

So, Sir Critic, I could have replied ; but 
I scorn it. — 'Tis language un urbane, — and 
only befitting the man who cannot give 
clear and satisfactory accounts of things, or 
dive deep enough into the first causes of 
human ignorance and confusion. It is 
moreover the reply valiant, — and there'bre 
I reject it; for though it might have sir ted 
my uncle Toby's character as a soldier ex- 
cellently well, — and had he accustomed 
himself, in such attacks, to whistle the Lil- 
libullero,* as he wanted no courage, 'tis the 



* MY UNCLE TOBYS WHISTLE, 
LILLIBULLERO. 

The Ballad* to this tune w as written in the year 
103C, on account of King James II. nominating to the 
Lieutenancy of Ireland Oeneral Talbot, newly created 
Earl of Tyrconnel, a furious Papist, who had recom- 
mended himself to his bigoted master by his arbitrary 

* See Percy's Reliques of Ancient Enj'ish Poetrjj -«\l i, page 35 



rery answer he would have given; yet it 
would by no means have done tor me. You 
see as plain as can be, that I write as a man 
of erudition ; — that even my similies, my 
allusions, my illustrations, my metaphors, 
are erudite, — and that I must sustain my 
character properly, and contrast it properly 

too, — else what would become of me 1 

Why, Sir, I should be undone; — at this 
very moment that I am going here to fill 
up one place against a critic, — I should 
have made an opening for a couple. 

Therefore I answer thus ; — 

Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have 
ever read, did you ever read such a book as 
Ipcke's Essay upon the Human Under- 
standing] Don't answer me rashly, — 

because many, I know, quote the book, who 
have not read it, — and many have read it 
who understand it not. — If either of these 
is yo- r case, as I write to instruct, I will 
tell you in three words what the book is. — 
It is a history. — A history! of who? what? 

where? when? Don't hurry yourself, 

It is a history-book, Sir, (which may possibly 
recommend it to the world) of what passes 
in a man's own mind ; and if you will say 
go much of the book, and no more, believe 
roe, you will cut no contemptible figure in 
a metaphysic circle. 

But this by the way. 

Now if you will venture to go along with 
me, and look down into the bottom of this 
matter, it will be found that the cause of 
obscurity and confusion in the mind of a 
man, is threefold. 

Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. 
Secondly, Slight and transient impressions 



treatment of the Protestants in the preceding year, 
when only Lieutenant-General and whose subse- 
quent conduct fully justified his expectations and 
their fears. 

This foolish Ballad, treating the Papists and chiefly 
tne Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, had a burden, 
■aid to be Irish words, "Lero, lero, lillibullero ;" and 
made an impression on the (King's) army, more pow- 
erful than either the philippics of Demosthenes or 
Cicero. The whole army, and at last the people both 
in city and country, were singing it perpetually. Per- 
haps never had so slight a thing so great an effect; for 
,t contributed not a little towards the Revolution in 
1688* 

Lilmbcllero and Bollen-a-lah, are said to have 
been the watch-words used among the Irish Papists, 
'♦n their i-^ssacre of the Protestants in 1G41. 

* See Bitiwp E-.'met's History of his own Times; and King's State 
U the Protestants in Ireland, 1691. 4to. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 4] 

made by the objects, when the said organs 
are not dull : and, Thirdly, A memory like 
unto a sieve; not able to retain what it has 
received. — Call down Dolly your chamber- 
maid, and I will give you my cap and bell 
along with it, if I make not this matter so 
plain that Dolly herself should understand 

it as well as Malbranch. When Dolly 

has indited her epistle to Robin, and has 
thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket 
hanging by her right side, — take that oppor- 
tunity to recollect, that the organs and fac- 
ulties of perception can, by nothing in this 
world, be so aptly typified and explained as 
by that one thing which Dolly's hand is in 
search of. — Your organs are not so dull tnat 
I should inform you, — 'tis an inch, Sir, of 
red seal-wax. 

When this is melted and dropped upon 
the letter, if Dolly fumbles too long for her 
thimble, till the wax is over-hardened, it 
will not receive the mark of her thimble 
from the usual impulse which was wont to 
imprint it. Very well. If Dolly's wax, for 
want of better, is bees- wax, or of a temper 
too soft, — tho' it may receive, — it will not 
hold the impression, how hard soever Dolly 
thrusts against it : and, last, of all, Suppo- 
sing the wax good, and eke the thimble, 
but applied thereto in careless haste, as her 
mistress rings the bell ; — in any one of these 
three cases, the print left by the thimble 
will be as unlike the prototype as a brass- 
jack. 

Now you must understand, that not one of 
these was the true cause of confusion in my 
uncle Toby's discourse; and it is for that 
very reason I enlarge upon them so long, 
after the manner of great physiologists, — 
to show the world what it did not arise from. 

What it did arise from, I have hinted 
above ; and a fertile source of obscurity it 
is, — and ever will be, — and that is, the un- 
steady uses of words, which have perplexed 
the clearest and most exalted underst&nd- 
ings. 

It is ten to one (at Arthur's) whether 
you have ever read the literary history of 
past ages ; — if you have, what terrible bat- 
tles, yclept logomachies, have they occa- 
sioned, and perpetuated with so much gall 
and ink-shed, — that a good-natured man 
cannot read the accounts of them without 
tears in his eyes. 



12 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



Gentle critic ! when thou hast weighed 
all this, and considered within thyself how 
much of thy o .vn knowledge, discourse, and 
conversation has been pestered and disor- 
dered, at one time or other, by this, and this 
only ; — what a pudder and racket in Coun- 
cils about aola and hs>6^aan ; and in the 
Schools of the learned about power and 
about spirit; — about essences, and about 
quintessences ; — about substances and about 
space ; what confusion in greater The- 
atres from words of little meaning, and as 
indeterminate a sense ! when thou consid- 
erest this, thou wilt not wonder at my uncle 
Toby's perplexities, — thou wilt drop a tear 
of pity upon his scarp and his counter-scarp ; 
— his glacis and his covered way; — his 
ravelin and his half-moon: 'twas not by 
ideas, — by Heaven; his life was put in 
jeopardy by words. 



CHAP. III. 

When my uncle Toby got his map of 
Namur to his mind, he began immediately 
to apply himself, and with the utmost dili- 
gence, to the study of it ; for nothing being 
of more importance to him than his recovery, 
and his recovery depending, as you have 
read, upon the passions and affections of his 
mind, it behoved him to take the nicest 
care to make himself so far master of his 
subject, as to be able to talk upon it without 
emotion. 

In a fortnight's close and painful applica- 
tion, which, by the bye, did my uncle Toby's 
wound, upon his groin, no good — he was 
enabled by the help of some marginal docu- 
ments at the feet of the elephant, together 
with Gobesius's military architecture and 
jiyroballogy, translated from the Flemish, 
to form his discourse with passable per- 
spicuity ; and before he was two full months 
gone, —he was right eloquent upon it, and 
could make not only the attack of the ad- 
vanced counterscarp with great order; 

but having by that time gone much deeper 
into the art than what his first motive made 
necessary, my uncle Toby was able to cross 
the Maes and Sambre ; make diversions as 
far as Vauban's line, the abbey of Salsines, 
&c. and gave his visitors as distinct a history 



of each of their attacks as that of the gate 
of St. Nicholas, where he had the honor to 
receive his wound. 

But desire of knowledge, like the thirst 
of riches, increases ever with the acquisi- 
tion of it. The more my uncle Toby pored 
over his map, the more he took a liking to 
it ! — by the same process and electrical as- 
similation, as I told you, through which I 
ween the souls of connoisseurs themselves, 
by long friction and incumbition, have the 
happiness, at length, to get all be-virtu'd, 
— be-pictured, — be-butterflied, and be-fid- 
dled. 

The more my uncle Toby drank of this* 
sweet fountain of science, the greater was 
the heat and impatience of his thirst; so 
that before the first year of his confinement 
had well gone round, there was scarce a 
fortified town in Italy or Flanders, of which, 
by one means or other, he had not procured 
a plan, reading over as he got them, and 
carefully collating therewith the histories 
of their sieges, their demolitions, their im- 
provements, and new works, all which he 
would read with that intense application 
and delight, that he would forget himself, 
his wound, his confinement, his dinner. 

In the second year, my uncle Toby pur- 
chased Ramelli and Cataneo, translated from 
the Italian ; — likewise Stevinus, Moralis, 
the Chevalier de Ville, Lorini, Coehorn, 
Sheeter, the Count de Pagan, the Marsha] 
Vauban, Mons. Blondel, with almost as 
many more books of military architecture 
as Don Quixote was found to have of chiv- 
alry, when the curate and barber invaded 
his library. 

Towards the beginning of the third year, 
which was in August, ninety-nine, my uncle 
Toby found it necessary to understand a 
little of projectiles : — and having judged it 
best to draw his knowledge from the foun- 
tain-head, he began with N. Tartaglia, who 
it seems was the first man who detected 
the imposition of a cannon-ball's doing all 
that mischief under the notion of a right 
line. — This, N. Tartaglia proved, to my 
uncle Toby, to be an impossible thing. 

Endless is the search of Truth. 

No sooner was my uncle Toby satisfied 
which road the cannon-ball did not go, but 
he was insensibly led on, and resolved in 
his mind to inquire and find out which road 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



43 



the ball did go: for which purpose he was' else — 'tis not very material whether uuon 
obliged to set off afresh with old Mai thus, | any other score the reader approves or it 
and studied him devoutly. — He proceeded j or not. 

next to Galileo and Torricellius, wherein, In the latter end of the third yoar, my 
by certain geometrical rules, infallibly laid 'uncle Toby perceiving that the parameter 
down, he found the precise path to be a and semi-parameter of the conic section 
Parabola, — or else a Hyperbola, — and that angered his wound, he left off the study of 



the parameter, or latus rectum, of the conic 
section of the said path, was to the quantity 
and amplitude in a direct ratio, as the whole 
line to the sine of double the angle of inci- 
dence, formed by the breach upon a hori- 
zontal plane ; — and that the semiparameter, 

stop ! my dear uncle Toby, stop ! 

— go not one foot farther into this thorny 
and bewildered track : — intricate are the 
steps ! intricate are the mazes of this laby- 
rinth ! intricate are the troubles which the 
pursuit of this bewitching phantom Know- 
ledge will bring upon thee. — O my uncle, 
— fly — fly — fly from it as from a serpent ! 

Is it fit good-natured man ! thou 

6hould'st sit up, with the wound upon thy 
groin, whole nights baking thy blood with 
hectic watchings] Alas! 'twill exas- 
perate thy symptoms, — check thy perspira- 
tions, — evaporate thy spirits — waste thy 
animal strength, — dry up thy radical mois- 
ture, — bring thee into a costive habit of 
body, — impair thy health, — and hasten all 

the infirmities of thy old age. O my 

uncle ! my uncle Toby ! 



CHAP. IV. 

I would not give a groat for that man's 
knowledge in pen-craft, who does not 

understand this: That the best plain 

narrative in the world, tacked very close 
to the last spirited apostrophe to my uncle 

Toby would have felt both cold and 

vapid upon the reader's palate; — therefore I 
forthwith put an end to the chapter, though 
I was in the middle of my story. 

Writers of my stamp have one 

principle in common with painters. Where 
an exact copying makes our pictures less 
6triking, we choose the less evil ; deeming 
it even more pardonable to trespass against 
truth than beauty. This is to be understood 
cum grano salis ; but be it as it will, — as 
the parallel is made more for the sake of 
etting the apostroohe cool, than any thing 



projectiles in a kind of a huff, and betook 
himself to the practical part of fortification 
only; the pleasure of which, like a spiing 
held back, returned upon him with re- 
doubled force. 

It was in this year that my uncle began 
to break in upon the daily regularity of a 
clean shirt, — to dismiss his barber unshaven, 
and to allow his surgeon scarce time suffi- 
cient to dress his wound, concerning him- 
self so little about it, as not to ask him 
once in seven times' dressing, how it went 
on: when, lo! — all of a sudden, for the 
change was as quick as lightning, he began 
to sigh heavily for his recovery, — complain- 
ed to my father, grew impatient with the 
surgeon : — and one morning, as he heard 
his foot coming up stairs, he shut up his 
books, and thrust aside his instruments, in 
order to expostulate with him upon the pro- 
traction of the cure, which, he told him, 
might surely have been accomplished at 
least by that time. — He dwelt long upon 
the miseries he had undergone, and the sor- 
rows of his four years' melancholy impris- 
onment; — adding, that had it not been for 
the kind looks and fraternal cheerings of 
the best of brothers, — he had long since 
sunk under his misfortunes. — My father 
was by. — My uncle Toby, by nature, was 

not eloquent, — it had the greater effect. 

The surgeon was confounded ; — not that 
there Wanted grounds for such, or greater 
marks of impatience, — but 'twas unexpected 
too. In the four years he had attended him, 
he had never seen any thing like it in my 
uncle Toby's carriage ; he had never once 
dropped one fretful or discontented word ; — 
he had been all patience, — all submission. 

— We lose the right of complaining some 
times, by forbearing it ; — but we often tre 
ble the force ; — the surgeon was astonisii 
ed ; but much more so, when he heard my 
uncle Toby go on, and peremptorily insist 
upon his healing up the wound airectly, — 
or sending for Monsieur Ronjat, the king'i 
serjeant-fiurgeon, to do it for him, 



44 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



The desire of life and health is implanted 
in man's nature ; — the love of liberty and 
enlargement is a sister-passion to it. These 
my uncle Toby had in common with his 
species ; — and either of them had been suf- 
ficient to account for his earnest desire to 
get well, and out of doors; — but I have told 
you before, that nothing" wrought with our 
family after the common way ; — and from 
the time and manner in which this eager 
desire showed itself in the present case, 
the penetrating reader will suspect, there 
was some other cause or crotchet for it in 

my imcle Toby's head ; There was so, 

and 'tis the subject of the next chapter to 
set *brth what that cause and crotchet was. 
I own, when that's done, 'twill be time to 
return back to the parlor fire-side, where 
we left my uncle Toby in the middle of his 
eei, ence. 



CHAP V. 

When a man gives himself up to the 
go fernment of a ruling passion, — or, in 
ot'*er words, when his Hobby-Horse grows 

headstrong, farewell cool reason and fair 

discretion. 

My uncle Toby's wound was near well ; 
and as soon as the surgeon recovered his 
surprise, and could get leave to say as much 
— he told him, 'twas just beginning to in- 
carnate ; and that if no fresh exfoliation 
happened, which there was no sign of, — it 
would be dried up in five or six weeks. 
The sound of as many Olympiads, twelve 
hours before, would have conveyed an idea 
of shorter duration to my uncle Toby's mind. 

The succession of his ideas was now 

rapid, — he broiled with impatience to put 
his design in execution ; — and so, without 
consulting farther with any soul living, — 
which, by the bye, I think is right, when 
you are predetermined to take no one soul's 

advice, he privately ordered Trim, his 

man, to pack up a bundle of lint and dress- 
ings, and hire a chariot-and-four, to be at 
the door exactly by twelve o'clock that day, 
<vhen he knew my father would be upon 

'Change. So leaving a bank-note upon 

\he table for the surgeon's care of him, and 
a letter oi tender thanks for his brother's — 
iif packed up his maps, his books of forti- 



fication, his instruments, <Sfc. and by the 
help of a crutch on one side, and Trim od 
the other, — my uncle Toby embarked for 
Shandy-Hall. 

The reason, or rather the rise, of this 
sudden demigration, was as follows: 

The table in my uncle Toby's room, and 
at which, the night before this change hap- 
pened, he was sitting with his maps, <^c 
about him — being somewhat of >,he smallest, 
for that infinity of great and small instru 
ments of knowledge which usually lay 
crowded upon it — he had the accident, in 
reaching over for his tobacco-box, to throw 
down his compasses; and in stooping to 
take the compasses up, with his sleeve 
he threw down his case of instruments 
and snuffers ; — and as the dice took a run 
against him, in his endeavoring to catch 
the snuffers in falling, — he thrust Monsieur 
Blondel off the table, and Count de Pagan 
o'top of him. 

'Twas to no purpose for a man, lame as 
my uncle Toby was, to think of redressing 
these evils by himself, — he rung his bell for 

his man Trim. Trim, quoth my uncle 

Toby, prithee see what confusion I have 
here been making — I must have some bet- 
ter contrivance, Trim. Canst not thou 

take my rule, and measure the length and 
breadth of this table, and then go and be- 
speak me one as big again? Yes, an 

please your Honor, replied Trim, making a 
bow ; but I hope your Honor will be soon 
well enough to get down to your country- 
seat, where, — as your Honor takes so much 
pleasure in fortification, we could manage 
this matter to a T. 

I must here inform you, that this servant 
of my uncle Toby's, who went by the name 
of Trim, had been a corporal in my uncle's 
own company, — his real name was James 
Butler ; — but having got the nickname of 
Trim, in the regiment, my uncle Toby, un- 
less when he happened to be very angry 
with him, would never call him by any 
other name. 

The poor fellow had been disabled for the 
service, by a wound on his left Knee, by a 
musket bullet, at the battle of Landen, 
which was two years before the affair of 
Namur; — and as the fellow was well-be- 
loved in the regiment, and a handy fellow 
into the bargain, my uncle Toby took aim 



tor his servant : and of an excellent use 
was lie, attending my uncle Toby in the 
camp and in his quarters, as a valet, groom, 
barber, cook, sempster, and nurse; and in- 
deed, from first to last, waited upon him, and 
served him with great fidelity and affection. 

My uncle Toby loved the man in return : 
and what attached him more to him still, 

was the similitude of their knowledge ; 

for Corporal Trim (for so, for the future, I 
6hall call him) by four years' occasional at- 
tention to his Master's discourse upon for- 
tified towns, and the advantage of prying 
and peeping continually into his Master's 
plans, <SfC. exclusive and besides what he 
gained Hobby-Horsically, as a body-ser- 
vant, Non Hobby-Horsical per se ; — had be- 
come no mean proficient in the science ; 
and was thought, by the cook and chamber- 
maid, to know as much of the nature of 
strong-holds as my uncle Toby himself. 

I have but one more stroke to give to 
finish Corporal Trim's character, — and it is 
the only dark line in it — The fellow loved 
to advise, or rather to hear himself talk: 
his carriage, however, was so perfectly re- 
spectful, 'twas easy to keep him silent when 
you had him so ; but set his tongue a-going, 
— you had no hold of him — he was voluble; 
— the eternal interlardings of your Honor, 
with the respectfulness of Corporal Trim's 
manner, interceding so strong in behalf of 
his elocution, — that though yon might have 
been incommoded, — you could not well be 
angry. My unc^e Tobv was seldom either 
the one or th*» other with him. — or, at least, 
this fault m Trim broke no souares with 
them. My uncle Toby, as I said, loved the 
man ;- -and besides, as he ever looked upon 
a faithful servant as an humble friend, — he 
could not bear to stop his mouth. — Such 
was Corporal Trim. 

If I durst presume, continued Trim, to 
give your Honor my advice, and speak my 

opinion in this matter Thou art welcome, 

Trim, quoth my uncle Toby speak, — 

speak what thou thinkest upon the sub- 
ject, man, without fear. — Why then, replied 
Trim (not hanging his ears and scratching 
' is head like a country lout, but) stroking 
his hair back from his forehead, and stand- 
ing erect as before his division, — I think, 
quoth Corporal Trim, with humble submis- 
sion to your Honor's better judgment, — 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 45 

that these ravelins, bastions, curtains, and 
horn-works, make but a poor, conteinptiMe, 
fiddle-faddle piece of work of it here upoe 
paper, compared to what your Honor and I 
could make of it were we in Ihe country 
by ourselves, and had but a rood, or a rood 
and a half of ground, to do wliai we pleased 
with: as summer is coming on, continued 
Trim, your Honor might sit out of doors, 



and give me the nography — (Call it iehno- 
graphy, quoth my uncle) — of the town or 
citadel your Honor was pleased to sit down 
before, and I'll be shot by your Honor upon 
the glacis of it, if I did not fortify it to your 

Honor's mind. 1 dare say thou would'st, 

Trim, quoth my uncle. — For if your Honor, 
continued the corporal, could but mark me 
the polygon, with its exact lines and angles 
— (That I could do very well, quotli my 
uncle) — I would begin with the fosse ; and 
if your Honor could tell me the proper 
depth and breadth — (I can, to a hair's 
breadth, Trim, replied my uncle) — I would 
throw out the earth upon this hand towards 
the town for the scarp, — and on that hand 
towards the campaign for the counter-scarp 
— (Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby) 
— and when I had sloped them to your 
mind, — an' please your Honor, I would face 
the glacis, as the finest fortifications are 
done in Flanders, with sods, — (and as your 
Honor knows they should be) — and I would 
make the walls and parapets of scds too. 

The best engineers call them Gazons, 

Trim, said my uncle Toby. Whether 

they are gazons or sods, is not much mat- 
ter, replied Trim ; your Honor knows they 
are ten times beyond a facing either of 

brick or stone. 1 know they are, Trim, 

in some respects, — quoth my uncle Toby, 
nodding his head : — for a cannon-ball enters 
into the gazon right onwards, without 
bringing any rubbish down with it, which 
might fill the fosse (as was the case at St. 
Nicholas's gate) and facilitate the passage 
over it. 

Your Honor understands these matters, 
replied Corporal Trim, better than any offi- 
cer in his Majesty's service;- — but would 
your Honor please to let the bespeaking ot 
the table alone, and let us but go into the 
country, I would work under your Honor's 
directions like a horse, and make fortifica- 
tions for you something like a tansy, with s«, 



46 LIFE AND 

their batteries saps, ditches, and palisadoes, 
that it should be worth all the world's 
riding twenty miles to go and see it. 

My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet 
as Trim went on ; — but it was not a blush 
of guilt, — of modesty, — or of anger, — it was 
a blush of joy ; — he was fired with Corporal 

Trim's project and description. Trim ! 

said my uncle Toby, thou hast said enough. 
— We might begin the campaign, continued 
Trim, on the very day that his Majesty and 
the Allies take the field, and demolish them, 
town by town, as fast as — Trim, quoth my 
uncle Toby, say no more. Your Honor, 
continued Trim, might sit in your arm- 
chair (pointing to it) this fine weather, giv- 
ing me your orders, and I would Say 

no more, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby 

Besides, your Honor would get not only 
pleasure and good pastime, — but good air, 
and good exercise, and good health ; — and 
your Honor's wound would be well in a 
month. — Thou hast said enough, Trim, 
quoth my uncle Toby (putting his hand 
into his breeches' pocket) — I like thy pro- 
ject mightily. — And if your Honor pleases, 
I'll this moment go and buy a pioneer's 
spade to take down with us ; and I'll be- 
speak a shovel and a pick-ax, and a couple 

of Say no more, Trim, quoth my uncle 

Toby, leaping up upon one leg, quite over- 
come with rapture, — and thrusting a guinea 
into Trim's hand, — Trim, said my uncle 
Toby, say no more ; — but go down, Trim, 
this moment, my lad, and bring up my sup- 
per this instant. 

Trim ran down and brought up his mas- 
ter's supper, to no purpose : — Trim's 

plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby's 
head, he could not taste it. — Trim, quoth 
my uncle Toby, get me to bed. — 'Twas all 
one. — Corporal Trim's description had fired 
his imagination ; — my uncle Toby could not 
f-hut his eyes. — The more he considered it, 
.he more bewitching the scene appeared to 
him ; — so that, two full hours before day- 
light, he had come to a final determination, 
and had concerted the whole plan of his 
and Corporal Trim's decampment. 

My uncle Toby had a little neat country- 
l jouse of his own, in the village where my 
father's estate lajt at Shandy, which had 
neen left him by an old uncle, with a small 
estate of about one hundred pounds a-year. 



OPINIONS 

Behind this house, and contiguous to it, 
was a kitchen-garden of about half an acre; 
and at the bottom of the garden, and cut 
off from it by a tall yew-hedge, was a bowl- 
ing-green, containing just about as much 
ground as Corporal Trim wished for ; — so 
that as Trim uttered the words, " A roof 
" and a half of ground to do what they woul 
" with," this identical bowling-green in- 
stantly presented itself, and became cu 
riously painted, all at once, upon the retina 
of my uncle Toby's fancy ; — which was the 
physical cause of making him change color 
or at least of heightening his blush to tha* 
immoderate degree I spoke of. 

Never did lover post down to a beloved 
mistress with more heat and expectation 
than my uncle Toby did, to enjoy the self- 
same tiling in private ; — I say in private ; — 
for it was sheltered from the house, as I 
told you, by a tall yew-hedge, and was cov- 
ered on the other three sides, from morta, 
sight, by rough holly and thick-set flower- 
ing shrubs : — so thav, the idea of not being 
seen, did not a little contribute to the idea 
of pleasure preconceived in my uncle Toby'a 
mind. — Vain thought! however thick it 
was planted about, — or private soever it 
might seem, — to think, dear uncle Toby, of 
enjoying a thing which took up a whole 
rood and a half of ground, — and not have it 
known ! 

How my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim 
managed this matter, — with the history of 
their campaigns, which were no way barren 
of events, — may make no uninteresting un- 
derplot in the epitasis and working up of 

this drama. At present the scene must 

drop, and change for the parlor fire-side. 



CHAP. VI. 



What can they be doing, brother! 

said my father. 1 think, replied my un- 
cle Toby, — taking, as I told you, the pipe 
from his mouth, and striking the ashes out 

of it as he began his sentence ; 1 think, 

replied he, — it would not be amiss, brother, 
if we rang the bell. 

Pray, what's all that racket over our 
heads, Obadiah? — quoth my father; — my 
brother and I can scarce hear ourselves* 
speak. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



Sir, answered Obadiah, making a bow 
towards his left shoulder, — my Mistress is 
taken very badly. — And where's Susannah 
running, down the garden there, as if they 

were going 1 to ravish her? Sir, she is 

running the shortest cut into the town, re- 
plied Obadiah, to fetch the old midwife. — 
Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and 
do you go directly for Dr. Slop, the man- 
midwife, with all our servicer, — and let him 
Know vour mistress is fallen into labor — 
and that I desire he will return with you 
with q,ll speed. 

It is very strange, says my father, ad- 
Iressing himself to my uncle Toby, as 
Obadiah shut the door, — as there is so ex- 
pert an operator as Dr. Slop so near, — that 
my wife should persist to the very last in 
this obstinate humor of hers, in trusting the 
life of my child, who has had one misfortune 
already, to the ignorance of an old woman ! 
— and not only the life of my child, brother, 
— but her own life, and with it the lives of 
all the children I might, per?dventure, have 
begot out of her hereafter. 

Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle Toby, 
my sister does it to save the expense. — A 
pudding's end, — replied my father; — the 
Doctor must be paid the same for inaction 
as action, — if not better, — tr keep him in 
temper. 

Then it can be out of nothing in the 

whole world, quoth my uncle Toby, in the 
simplicity of his heart, — but Modesty. — My 
sister, I dare say, added he, does not care to 

let a man come so near her . I will not 

say whether my uncle Toby had completed 
the sentence or not; — 'tis for his advantage 
to suppose he had, — as, I think, he could 
have added no one word which would have 
improved it. 

If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had 
not fully arrived at the period's end, — then 
the world stands indebted to the sudden 
snapping of my father's tobacco-pipe for one 
of the neatest examples of that ornamental 
figure in oratory, which rhetoricians style 

the Aposiopesis. Just Heaven ! how 

does the Poco piu and Poco meno of the 
Italiun artists; — the insensible more or 
less, determine the precise line of beauty 
in the sentence, as well as in the statue ! 
! How do the slight touches of the chisel, 
1 Jie pencil, the pen, aie fiddle-stick, et 



ccclcra, — give the true sweil, wnich tjnp* 
the true pleasure ! — O my countrymen,— 
be i. ice: — be cautious of your language, — 
and never, O ! never let it be forgotten upon 
what small particles your eloquence and 
yo ar fame depend. 

" My sister, mayhap," quoth my 

uncle Toby, " does not choose to let a man 

" come so near her ." Make this dash, 

, — 'tis an Aposiopesis ; — take the dash 

away, and write Backside, 'tis bawdy; 

— scratch Backside out, and put cover'd 
way in, 'tis a metaphor ; — and, I dare say, 
as fortification ran so much in my uncle 
Toby's head, that if it had been left to have 
added one word to the sentence, — that word 
was it. 

But whether that was the case, or not 
the case ; — or whether the snapping of my 
father's tobacco-pipe, so critically,- happened 
through accident or anger, will be seen in 
due time. 



CHAP. VII. 



Though my father was a good natural 
philosopher, — yet he was something of a 
moral philosopher too; for which reason, 
when his tobacco-pipe snapp'd short in the 
middle, — he had nothing to do, as such, but 
to have taken hold of the two pieces, and 
thrown them gently upon the back of the 

fire. He did no such thing; he threw 

them with all the violence in the world ; — 
and, to give the action still more emphasis, 
— he started upon both legs to do it. 

This looked something like heat; — and 
the manner of his reply to what my uncle 
Toby was saying, proved it was so. 

— " Not choose," quoth my father (re- 
peating my uncle Toby's words) " to let a 

" man come so near her !" By Heaven, 

brother Toby ! you would try the patience of 
Job; and I think I have the plagues of one 

already without it. Why? Where? — 

Wherein 1 Wherefore 1 Upon what 

account! replied my uncle Toby, in th« 

utmost astonishment. To think, said my 

father, of a man living to your age, brother, 

and knowing so little about women ! 1 

know nothing at all about them, — replica 
my uncle Toby : and I think, continued ne, 



4S 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



that the shock I received the year after the 
demolition of Dunkirk, in my affair with 
Widow Wad man : — which shock, you know, 
I should not have received, but from my 
total ignorance of the sex, — has given me 
just cause to say, that I neither know, nor 
do pretend to know, any thing about 'em, 

or their concerns either. Methinks, 

brother, replied my father, you might, at 
least, know so much as the right end of a 
woman from the wrong. 

It is said in Aristotle's Master-Piece, 
4 * That when a man doth think of any thing 
" which is past, — he looketh down upon the 
"ground; — but that when he thinketh of 
1 something that is to come, he looketh up 

towards the heavens." 

My uncle Toby, I suppose, thought of 
neither, for he looked horizontally. — Right 
end ! quoth my uncle Toby, muttering the 
two words low to himself, and fixing his 
two eyes insensibly as he muttered them, 
upon a small crevice, formed by a bad joint 

in the chimney-piece Right end of a 

woman ! — I declare, quoth my uncle, I 
know no more which it is than the man in 
the moon; — and if I was to think, continued 
my uncle Toby (keeping his eyes still 
fixed upon the bad joint) this month to- 
gether, I am sure I should not be able to 
find it out. 

Then, brother Toby, replied my father, I 
will tell you. 

Every thing in the world, continued my 
father (filling a fresh pipe) — every thing in 
the world, my dear brother Toby, has two 

handles: Not always, quoth my uncle 

Toby. At least, replied my father, every 

one has two hands, — which comes to the 

same thing. Now, if a man was to sit 

down coolly, and consider within himself 
the make, the shape, the construction, 
come-atability and convenience of all the 
parts which constitute the whole of that 
animal, called Woman, and compare them 

analogically, 1 never understood rightly 

the meaning of that word, — quoth my uncle 
Tobv — 

Analogy, replied my father, is the cer- 
tain relation and agreement which different 

Here a devil of a rap at the door snap- 

oed my father's definition (like his tobacco- 
pipe) in two, — and, at the same time, crushi- 
ng tliu head o 4 ' as notable and curious a 



dissertation as ever was engendered in the 
womb of speculation : — it was some months 
before my father could get an opportunity 
to be safely delivered of it : — and, at this 
hour, it is a thing full as problematical as 
the subject of the dissertation itself, — (con- 
sidering the confusion and distress of our 
domestic misadventures, which are now 
coming thick, one upon the back of another) 
whether I shall be able to find a place fir 
it in the third volume or not 



CHAP. VIII. 

It is about an hour and a half's tolerable 
good reading since my uncle Toby rung the 
bell, when Obadiah was ordered to saddle a 
horse, and go for Dr. Slop, the man-mid- 
wife ; — so that no one can say, with reason, 
that I have not allowed Obadiah time 
enough, poetically speaking, and consider- 
ing the emergency too, both to go and come ; 
— though, morally and truly speaking, the 
man perhaps has scarce had time to get on 
his boots. 

If the hyperergic will go upon this ; and 
is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and 
measure the true distance betwixt the ring- 
ing of the bell and the rap at the door ; and, 
after finding it to be no more than two min- 
utes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths, — 
should take upon him to insult over me for 
such a breach in the unity, or rather proba- 
bility of time, — I would remind him, that 
the idea of duration, and of its simple 
modes, is got merely from the train and 
succession of our ideas — and is the true 
scholastic pendulum, — and by which, as a 
scholar, I will be tried in this matter, — ab- 
juring and detesting the jurisdiction of all 
other pendulums whatever. 

I would therefore desire him to consider, 
that it is but poor eight miles from Shandy 
hall to Dr. Slop the man-midwife's house : — 
and that whilst Obadiah has been going 
those said miles and back, I have brought 
my uncle Toby from Namur, quite across 
all Flanders, into England ; — that I have 
hid him ill upon my hands near four years, 
— and have since travelled him and Corpo- 
ral Trim, in a chariot-and-four, a jourrx* 
of near two hundred miles down into Yor* 



shirv); — all which put together, must have 
prepared the reader's imagination for the 
entrance of Dr. Slop upon the stage, — as 
much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, 
or a concerto between the acts. 

If my hypercritic is untraclahle, alleging 
that two minutes and thirteen seconds are 
no more than two minutes and thirteen sec- 
onds, — when I have said all I can about 
them ; and that this plea, though it might 
save me dramatically, will damn me bio- 
graphically, rendering my book, from this 
very moment, a professed Romance, which, 
before, was a book apocryphal : — If I am 
thus pressed, — I then put an end to the 
whole objection and controversy about it all 
at once, — by acquainting him, that Oba- 
diah had not got above threescore yards 
from the stable-yard, before he met with 
Dr. Slop : — and indeed he gave a dirty 
proof that he had met with him, and was 
within an ace of giving a tragical one too. 

Imagine to yourself But this had bet- 
ter begin a new chapter. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 49 

full gallop, and making all practicable speed 



the adverse way. 

Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment 
in this description. 

Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah a mile off, 
posting in aVnarrow lane directly towards 
him, at that monstrous rate, splashing and 
plunging like a devil through thick and 
thin, as he approached; would not such a 
phenomenon, with such a vortex of mud 
and water moving along with it, round its 
axis, — have been a subject of juster appre- 
hension to Dr. Slop in his situation, than 
the worst of Winston's comets'? — To say 
nothing of the Nucleus; that is, of Obadiah 
and the coach-hcrse. — In my idea, the vor 
tex alone of 'em was enough to have in 
volved and carried, if not the doctor, at 
least the doctor's pony, quite away with it 
What then do you think must the terror 
and hydrophobia of Dr. Slop have been, 
when you read (which you are just going 
to do) that he was advancing thus warily 
along towards Shandy-hall, and had ap- 
proached to within sixty yards of it, and 
within five yards of a sudden turn, made 
by an acute-angle of the garden-wall, — and 
in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane, — when 
Obadiah and his coach-horse turned the 
corner, rapid, furious, — pop, — full upon 
courtly figure of a Doctor Slop, of about' him! — Nothing, I think, in nature, can be 
four feet and a half perpendicular height, ! supposed more terrible than such a ren- 
with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality | counter, — so imprompt! so ill prepared to 
of belly, which might have done honor toj stand the shock of it as Dr. Slop was. 



CHAP. IX. 



Imagine to yourself a little squat, 



a serjeant in the horse-guards. 



What could Dr. Slop do? — he crossed 



Such were the outlines of Dr. Slop's himselfH Pugh! — but the doctor, Sir, was 

figure; which — if you have read Hogarth's a Papist. — No matter; he had better have 

Analysis of Beauty, — and if you have not, kept hold of the pummel. — Tie had so — 

I wish you would, you must know, nay, as it happened, he had better have 

may as certainly be caricatured and con- done nothing at all; for in crossing himself 

veyed to the mind by three strokes as three he let go his whip; and in attempting to 



hundred. 

Imagine such a one;- 



I save his whip betwixt his knee and hia 
-for such, I say,' saddle's skirt, as it slipped, he lost his stir- 



were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, rup, — in losing which he lost his seat; and' 
coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling in the multitude of all these losses (which, 
through the dirt upon the vertebra of a by the bye, shows what little advantage isf 
little diminutive pony, of a pretty color — in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his 
but of strength, — alack ! scarce able to have presence of mind. So that without waiting 
made an amble of it, under such a fardel, for Obadiah's onset, he left his pony to its 
had the roads been in an ambling condi- destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, some 

Eton. They were not. Imagine to thing in the style and manner of a pack of 

yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a strong wool, and without any other eonse;Mioiic;? 
monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a from the fall save tha 4, of Deing left fas \\ 
G 5 



i>0 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



would have been) with the broadest part of 
him sunk about twelve inches deep in the 
mire. 

Obadiah pull'd off his cap twice to Dr. 
Slop ; — once as he was falling, — and then 

again when he saw him seated. Ill-timed 

complaisance ! — had not the fellow better 
have stopped his horse, and got off and 
help'd him] — Sir, he did all that his situa- 
tion would allow: — but the momentum of 
the coach-horse was so great, that Obadiah 
could not do it all at once ; he rode in a cir- 
cle three times round Dr. Slop, before he 
could fully accomplish it any how ; — and at 
the last, when he did stop his beast, 'twas 
done with such an explosion of mud, that 
Obadiah had better have been a league off. 
In short, never was a Dr. Slop so beluted, 
and so transubstantiated, since that affair 
»came into fashion. 



CHAP. X. 



'Whin Dr. Slop entered the back parlor, 
where my father and my uncle Toby were 
-discoursing upon the nature of women, — it 
was hard to determine whether Dr. Slop's 
figure, or Dr. Slop's presence, occasioned 
more surprise to them ; for as the accident 
happened so near the house, as not to make 
it worth while for Obadiah to remount him, 

Obadiah had led him in as he was ; 

unwiped, unappointed, ununnealed, with 
all his stains and blotches on him. — He 
stood like Hamlet's ghost, motionless and 
speechless, for a full minute and a half at 
the parlor-door (Obadiah still holding his 
hand) with all the majesty of mud ; — his 
hinder parts, upon which he had received 
his fall, totally besmeared ; — and in every 
other part of him, blotched over in such a 
manner with Obadiah's explosion, that you 
would have sworn (without mental reserva- 
tion) that every grain of it had taken ef- 
fect. 

Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle 
Toby to have triumphed over my father in 
nis turn; — for no mortal, who had beheld 
Dr. Slop in that pickle, could have dissent- 
ed from so much, at least, of my uncle 
Toby's opinion, "That mayhap his sister 



"might not care to let such a Dr. Slop 

" come so near her ." But it. was the 

argumentum ad hominem ; and if my uncle 
Toby was not very expert at it, you may 

think, he might not care to use it. No ; 

the reason was, — 'twas not his nature to 
insult. 

Dr. Slop's presence at that time was no 
less problematical than the mode of it ; tho' 
it is certain, one moment's reflection in my 
father might have solved it ; for he had ap- 
prized Dr. Slop but the week before, that 
my mother was at her full reckoning ; and 
as the doctor had heard nothing since, 'twas 
natural and very political too, in him, to 
have taken a ride to Shandy-hall, as he did, 
merely to see how matters went on. 

But my father's mind took unfortunately 
a wrong turn in the investigation ; running, 
like the hypercritic's, altogether upon the 
ringing of the bell and the rap upon the 
door, — measuring their distance, and keep- 
ing his mind so intent upon the operation 
as to have power to think of nothing else, 

commonplace infirmity of the greatest 

mathematicians ! working with might and 
main at the demonstration, and so wasting 
all their strength upon it, that they have 
none left in them to draw the corollary to 
do good with. 

The ringing of the bell, and the rap upon 
the door, struck likewise strong upon the 
sensorium of my uncle Toby ; — but it ex- 
cited a very different train of thoughts ; — 
the two irreconcilable pulsations instantly 
brought Stevinus, the great engineer, along 
with them, into my uncle Toby's mini 
What business Stevinus had in this affair, 

— is the greatest problem of all : It shaJl 

be solved; — but not in the next chapter. 



CHAP. XI. 



Writing, when properly managed (aa 
you may be sure I think mine is) is bu . a 
different name for conversation. As no one 
who knows what he is about in good com- 
pany, would venture to talk all ; — so no au- 
thor who understands the just boundaries 
of decorum and good-breeding, would pre- 
sume to think all: the truest respect which 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



jovl can pay to the reader's understanding, 
is to halve this matter amicably, and leave 
him something- to imagine, in his turn, as 
well as yourself. 

For my own part, I am eternally paying 
him compliments of this kind, and do all 
that lies in my power to keep his imagina- 
tion as busy as my own. 

'Tis his turn now ! — I have given an 
ample description of Dr. Slop's sad over- 
throw, and of his sad appearance in the 
back parlor ; — his imagination must now go 
on with it for a while. 

Let the reader imagine then, that Dr. 
Slop has told his tale, — and in what words, 
and with what aggravations, his fancy 
chooses; — let him suppose, that Obadiah 
lias told his tale also, and with such rueful 
looks of affected concern, as he thinks best 
will contrast the two figures as they stand 

by each other. Let him imagine, that 

my father has stepped up stairs to see 
my mother ; — and, to conclude this work of 
imagination, — let him imagine the doctor 
washed, — rubbed down and condoled. — fe- 
licitated, — got into a pair of Obadiah's 
pumps, stepping forwards towards the door, 
upon the very point of entering upon action. 

Truce ! — truce, good Dr. Slop ! — stay thy 
obstetric hand ; — return it safe unto thy 
bosom to keep it warm ; — little dost thou 

know what obstacles, little dost thou 

think what hidden causes, retard its opera- 
tion; Hast thou, Dr. Slop, — hast thou 

been intrusted with the secret articles of 
the solemn treaty which has brought thee 
into this place 1 — Art thou aware that at this 
instant a daughter of Lucina is put obstetri- 
cally over thy head ? Alas ! — 'tis too true. 
— Besides, great son of Pilumnus! what canst 
thou do 1 Thou hast come forth unarm'd ; 
-thou hast left thy tire-tete,— thy new-in- 
\en\ed forceps, — thy crotchet, — thy squirt. 
arid all thy instruments of salvation and de- 
liverance behind thee : — by Heaven ! at 
this moment they are hanging up in a 
green baize bag, betwixt thy two pistols, 
at the bed's head ! — Ring ; — call ; — send 
Obadiah back upon the coach-horse to bring 
them with all speed. 

Make great haste, Obadiah, quoth 

my fatner, and I'll give thee a crown ! — 
ana, quoth my uncle Toby, I'll give him 
■mother . 



CHAP. XII. 



Your sudden and unexpected arriva.'. 
quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself 
to Dr. Slop (all three of them sitting down 
to the fire together, as my uncle Toby began 
to speak) — instantly brought the great Ste- 
vinus into my head, who, you must know, ia 
a favorite author with me. Then, added my 
father, making use of the argument ad 
crumenam, — I will lay twenty guineas to 
a single crown piece (which will serve 
to give away to Obadiah when he gets back) 
that this same Stevinus was some engineer 
or other, — or has wrote something or other, 
either directly or indirectly, upon the sci- 
ence of fortification. 

He has so, — replied my uncle Toby. — I 
knew it, said my father, though, for the sou 1 
of me, I cannot see what kind of connexion 
there can be betwixt Dr. Slop's sudden 
coming, and a discourse upon fortification ; 
— yet I fear'd it. — Talk of what we will, 
brother, — or let the occasion be ever so 
foreign or unfit for the subject, — you are 
sure to bring it in. I would not, brother 

Toby, continued my father, 1 declare I 

would not have my head so full of curtains 
and horn- works. — That I dare say you would 
not, quoth Dr. Slop, interrupting him, and 
laughing most immoderately at his pun. 

Dennis the critic could not detest and 
abhor a pun, or the insinuation of a pun, 
more cordially than my father ; — he would 
grow testy upon it at any time : — but to be 
broke in upon by one, in a serious discourse, 
was as bad, he would say, as a fillip upon 
the nose : — he saw no difference. 

Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing 
himself to Dr. Slop, — the curtains my bro- 
ther Shandy mentions here, have nothing 
to do with bedsteads ; — though, I know Du 
Cange says, " That bed-curtains, in all 
" probability, have taken their name from 
" them;" — nor have the horn- works he speaks 
of, any thing in the world to do with the horn- 
work^ of cuckoldom : but the curtain, Sit. 
is the word we use in fortification, for thai 
part of the wall or rampart which lies be- 
tween the two bastions, and joins them.— 
Besiegers seldom offer to carry on their at 
tacks directly against the curtain, for thin 
reason, because they are so well flanked 
j ('Tis the case of other curtains, quoth D» 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



S!od. laughing.) However, continued my 
uncle Toby, to make them sure, he gene- 
rally chose to place ravelins before them, 
taking care not only to extend them beyond 

the fosse, or ditch. The common men, 

who know very little of fortification, con- 
found the ravelin and the half-moon to- 
gether, — tho' they are very different things ; 
— not in their figure or construction, for we 
make them exactly alike, in all points ; for 
they always consist of two faces, making a 
salient angle, with the gorges not straight, 

but in form of a crescent. Where then 

lies the difference ? (quoth my father, a little 
testily.) — In their situations, answered my 
uncle Toby : — for when a ravelin, brother, 
stands before the curtain, it is a ravelin ; 
and when a ravelin stands before a bastion, 
then the ravelin is not a ravelin ; — it is a 
half-moon ; a half-moon likewise is a half- 
moon, and no more, so long as it stands 
before its bastion ; — but was it to change 
place, and get before the curtain, — 'twould 
be no longer a half-moon ; a half-moon, in 
that case, is not a half-moon ; — 'tis no 



hear her cry out, yet nothing will serve 

you but to carry off the man-midwife 

Accoucheur, — if you please, quoth Dr. Slop. 

With all my heart, replied my father, 

I don't care what they call you; — but I 
wish the whole science of fortification, with 
all its inventors, at the Devil ; — it has been 
the death of thousands, — and it will be mine 
in the end. — I would not, I would not, bro- 
ther Toby, have my brains so full of saps, 
mines, blinds, gabions, palisadoes, ravelins, 
half-moons, and such trumper>, to be pro- 
prietor of Namur, and of all the towns in 
Flanders with it. 

My uncle Toby was a man patient of 
injuries ; — not from want of courage ; — I 
have told you in a former chapter, " that 
" he was a man of courage :" and will add 
here, that where just occasions presented, 
or called it forth, — I know no man under 
whose arm I would have sooner taken shel- 
ter ; — nor did this arise from any insensi- 
bility or obtuseness of his intellectual parts; 
— for he felt this insult of my father as 
feelingly as a man could do ; — but he was 
more than a ravelin. 1 think, quoth my! of a peaceful, placid nature, — no jarring 



father, that the noble science of defence has 
its weak sides — as well as others. 

— As for the horn-work (heigh ! ho ! 
sigh'd my father) which, continued my uncle 
Toby, my brother was speaking of, they are 
a very considerable part of an outwork ; — 
they are called by the French engineers 
Ouvrage a come ; and we generally make 
them to cover such places as we suspect 
to be weaker than the rest ; — 'tis formed by 
two epaulments or demi-bastions, — they are 
very pretty, — and if you will take a walk, 
I'll engage to show you one well worth 
your trouble. I own, continued my uncle 
Toby, when we crown them, — they are 
much stronger; but then they are very 
expensive, and take up a great deal of 
ground; so that, in my opinion, they are 
most of use to cover or defend the head of 
a camp; otherwise the double tenaille. — 
]fy the mother who bore us ! — brother Toby, 
quoth my father, not able to hold out any 
longer, — you would provoke a saint ; — here 
have you got us, I know not how, not only 
souse into the middle of the old subject 
again, — but so full is your head of these 
confounded works, that though my wife is 



element in it, — all was mixed up so kindly 
within him ; my uncle Toby had scarce a 
heart to retaliate upon a fly. 

— Go, — says he, one day at dinner, to an 
overgrown one which had buzzed about his 
nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner- 
time, — and which, after infinite attempts, he 
had caught at last, as it flew by him ; — I'll 
not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rising 
from his chair, and going across the room, 

with the fly in his hand, I'll not hurt a 

hair of thy head : — Go, says he, lifting up 
the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, 
to let it escape ; — go, poor devil, get thee 

gone, why should I hurt thee? This 

world surely is wide enough to hold both 
thee and me. 

I was but ten years old when this hap- 
pened : but whether it was, that the action 
itself was more in unison to my nerves in 
that age of pity, which instantly set my 
whole frame into one vibration of most 
pleasurable sensation : — or how far the 
manner and expression of it might go to- 
wards it; — or in what degree, or by what 
secret magic, — a tone of voice and harmony 
of movement, attuned by mercy, might find 



this moinen, in the pains of labor, and you, a passage to my heart, I know not; — this 




fa o 
to 

E 3 

H a 



T know, that the lesson of universal good- 
will then taught and imprinted by my uncle 
Toby, has never since been worn out of 
mind : and though I would not depreciate 
what the study of the UtercB humaniores, 
at the university, have done for me in that 
respect, or discredit the other helps of an 
expensive education bestowed upon me, 
iM>th a home and abroad since ; — yet I often 
think that I owe one half of my philan- 
thropy to that one accidental impression. 

This is to serve for parents and governors, 
instead of a whole volume upon the subject. 

I could not give the reader this stroke in 
my uncle Toby's picture, by the instrument 
with which I drew the other parts of it, — 
that taking in no more than the mere Hobby- 

Horsical likeness; this is a part of his 

moral character. My father, in this patient 
endurance of wrongs which I mention, was 
very different, as the reader must long ago 
have noted ; he had a much more acute and 
quick sensibility of nature, attended with a 
little soreness of temper. Though this never 
transported him to any thing which looked 
like malignancy ; — yet in the little rubs and 
vexations of life, 'twas apt to show itself 
in a drollish and witty kind of peevishness: 
— He was, however, frank and generous in 
his nature ; — at all times open to conviction : 
and in the little ebullitions of this subacid 
humor towards others, but particularly to- 
wards my uncle Toby, whom he truly loved, 

he would feel more pain, ten times 

toid (except in the affair of my aunt Dinah, 
or where an hypothesis was concerned) 
than what he ever gave. 

The characters of the two brothers, in 
this view of them, reflected light upon each 
other, and appeared with great advantage 
in this affair which arose about Stevinus. 

I need not tell the reader, if he keeps a 

Hobby Horse, that a man's Hobby- 

Horse i« as tender a part as he has about 
him; and that these unprovoked strokes at 
my uncle Toby's could not be unfelt by 

him. No: as I said above, my uncle 

Toby did feel them, and very sensibly too. 

Pray, Sir, what said he 1 — How did he 
behave 1 — O, Sir ! — it was great ; for as 
eoon as my father had done insulting his 
Hobby-Horse, he turned his head, with- 
out the least emotion, from Dr. Slop, to 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 53 

looking up into my father's face, with a 
countenance spread over with so much good- 
nature ; — so placid ; — so fraternal ; — so in- 
expressibly tender towards him : — it pene- 
trated my father to his heart; he rose up 
hastily from his chair, and seizing hold of 
both my uncle Toby's hands as he spoke : — 
brother Toby, said he, — I beg thy pardon ; 
— forgive, I pray thee, this rash humor 

which my mother gave me. My dear, 

dear brother, answered my uncle Toby, rising 
up by my father's help, say no more about 
it ; — you are heartily welcome, had it been 
ten times as much, brother. But 'tis un- 
generous, replied my father, to hurt any 
man ; — a brother worse ; — but to hurt a 
brother of such gentle manners, — so un- 
provoking, — and so unresenting; — 'tis base : 
— -by Heaven, 'tis cowardly. — You are hear- 
tily welcome, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, 
— had it been fifty times as much. Be- 
sides, what have I to do, my dear Toby, cried 
my father, either with your amusements or 
your pleasures, unless it was in my power 
(which it is not) to increase their measure? 

Brother Shandy, answered my uncle 

Toby, looking wistfully in his face, — you 
are much mistaken in this point; — for you 
do increase my pleasure very much, in be- 
getting children for the Shandy family at 

your time of life. But, by that, Sir, quoth 

Dr. Slop, Mr. Shandy increases his own 
Not a jot, quoth my father. 



CHAP. XIII. 

My brother does it, quoth my uncle Toby, 
out of principle. In a family way, I sup- 
pose, quoth Dr. Slop. Pshaw ! said my 

father, — 'tis not worth talking of. 



CHAP. XIV. 

At the end of the last chapter, my fathci 
and my uncle Toby were left both standing, 
like Brutus and Cassius, at the close of the 
scene, making up their accounts. 

As my father spoke the three last words. 



he sat down ; — my uncle Toby exact! v 
* r hom he> w»s addressing his discourse, and j followed his examole, only, that before he 



54 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



took his chair, *»e rung- the bell, to order 
Corporal Trim, who was in waiting, to step 
home for Stevinus : — my uncle Toby's house 
being no farther off than the opposite side 
of the way. 

Some men would have dropped the sub- 
ject of Stevinus ; — but my uncle Toby had 
no resentment in his heart; and he went 
on with the subject, to show my father he 
had none. 

Your sudden appearance, Dr. Slop, quoth 
my uncle, resuming the discourse, instant- 
ly brought Stevinus into my head. (My 
father, you may be sure, did not offer to lay 
any more wagers upon Stevinus's head.) 

Because, continued my uncle Toby, 

the celebrated sailing chariot, which be- 
longed to Prince Maurice, and was of such 
wonderful contrivance, and velocity, as to 
carry half a dozen people thirty German 
miles, in I don't know how few minutes, — 
was invented by Stevinus, that great 
mathematician and engineer. 

You might have spared your servant the 
trouble, quoth Dr. Slop (as the fellow is 
lame) of going for Stevinus's account of it, 
because, in my return from Leyden through 
the Hague, I walked as far as Schevling, 
which is two long miles, on purpose to take 
a view of it. 

That's nothing, replied my uncle Toby, 
to what the learned Peireskius did, who 
walked a matter of five hundred miles, 
reckoning from Paris to Schevling, and 
from Schevling to Paris back again, in or- 
der to see it, — and nothing else. 

Some men cannot bear to be outgone. 

The more fool Peireskius, replied Dr. 
Slop. But, mark, 'twas out of no contempt 
of Peireskius at all ; — but that Peireskius's 
indefatigable labor in trudging- so far on 
foot, out of love for the sciences, reduced 
the exploit of Dr. Slop, in that affair, to 
nothing-; — the more fool Peireskius, said 
he ag-ain. — Why sol — replied my father, 
taking his brother's part, not only to make 
reparation as fast as he could for the insult 
he had given him, which sat still upon my 
father's mind; — but partly, that my father 
began reaiiy to interest himself in the dis- 
course — Why so 1 — said he. Why is Peires- 
ki.is, or any man else, to be abused for an 
uppetite for that, or any other morsel of 
txtund knowledge: for notwithstanding I 



know nothing of the chariot in question, 
continued he, the inventor of it must have 
had a very mechanical head ; and though 1 
cannot guess upon what principles of phi- 
losophy he has achieved it ; — yet certainly 
his machine has been constructed upon solid 
ones, be they what they will, or it could 
not have answered at the rate my brother 
mentions. 

It answered, replied my uncle Toby, as 
well, if not better ; for, as Peireskius ele- 
gantly expresses it, speaking of the velocity 
of its motion, Tarn citus erat, qnam erat 
ventus : which, unless I have forgot my 
Latin, is, that it was as swift as the wind 
itself. 

But pray, Dr. Slop, quoth my father, in- 
terrupting my uncle (though not without 
begging pardon for it at the same time) 
upon what principles was this self-same 
chariot set a-going? — Upon very pretty 
principles to be sure, replied Dr. Slop: — 
and I have often wondered, continued he, 
evading the question, why none of ou* 
g-entry, who live upon large plains like this 
of ours, — (especially they whose wives are 
not past child-bearing) attempt nothing of 
this kind ; for it would not only be infinitely 
expeditious upon sudden calls, to which the 
sex is subject, — if the wind only served, — 
but would be excellent good husbandry to 
make use of the winds, which cost nothing, 
and which eat nothing, rather than horses, 
which (the Devil take 'em) both cost and 
eat a great deal. 

For that very reason, replied my father, 
"Because they cost nothing, and because 
" they eat nothing," — the scheme is bad ; — 
it is the consumption of our products, as 
well as the manufactures of them, which 
gives bread to the hungry, circulates trade, 
brings in money, and supports the value of 
our lands : — and though, I own, if I was a 
prince, I would generously recompense the 
scientific head which brought forth such 
contrivances ; — yet I would as peremptorily 
suppress the use of them. 

My father here had got into his element, 
and was going on as prosperously with his 
dissertation upon trade, as my uncle Toby 
had before, upon his of fortification ; but to 
the loss of much sound knowledge, the des- 
tinies in the morning had decreed that no 
dissertation of any kind should be spun by 



my father that day, — for as he opened his 
mouth to begin the next sentence, 



CHAP. XV. 



In popped Corporal Trim with Stevinus : 
— But 'twas too late ; — all the discourse had 
been exhausted without him, and was run- 
ning into a new channel. 

— You may take the book home again, 
Trim, said my uncle Toby, nodding to him. 

But, prithee, Corporal, quoth my father, 
drolling, — look first into it, and see if thou 
canst spy aught of a sailing chariot in it. 

Corporal Trim, by being in the service, 
had learned to obey, — and not to remon- 
strate ; — so taking the book to a side-table, 
and running over the leaves: an' please 
your Honour, said Trim, I can see no such 
thing; however, continued the Corporal, 
drolling a little in his turn, I'll make sure 
work of it, an' please your Honor. So 
taking hold of the two covers of the book, 
one in each hand, and letting the leaves fall 
down as he bent the covers back, he gave 
the book a good sound shake. 

There is something fallen out, however, 
said Trim, an' please your Honor ; — but it is 
not a chariot, or any thing like one. Prithee, 
Corporal, said my father, smiling, what is it 
then 1 — I think, answered Trim, stooping to 
take it up, — 'tis more like a sermon, — for it 
begins with a text of scripture, and the 
chapter and verse ; — and then goes on, not 
as a chariot, but like a sermon directly. 

The company smiled. 

I cannot conceive how it is possible, 
quoth my uncle Toby, for such a thing as a 
sermon to have got into my Stevinus. 

I think 'tis a sermon, replied Trim ; — but 
if it please your Honors, as it is a fair hand, 
I will read you a page : — for Trim, you 
must know, loved to hear himself read al- 
most as well as talk. 

I have ever a strong propensity, said my 
father, to look into things which cross my 
way, by such strange fatalities as these ; — 
and as we have nothing better to do, at least 
till Obadiah gets back, I shall be obliged to 
vou, brother, if Dr. Slop has no objection to 
it, to order the Corporal to give us a page 
or two of it, — if he is as able to do it as 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 55 

he seems willing. An' please your Honor, 
quoth Trim, I officiated two whole cam- 
paigns in Flanders, as clerk to the chaplain 

of the regiment. He can read it, quoth 

my uncle Toby, as well as I can. Trim, 

I assure you, was the best scholar in my 
company; and should have had the next 
halberd, but for the poor fellow's misfor- 
tune. Corporal Trim laid his hand upon 
his heart, and made an humble bow to his 
master ; — then laying down his hat upon the 
floor, and taking up the sermon in his left 
hand, in order to have his right at liberty. — 
he advanced, nothing doubting, into the 
middle of the room, where he could best 
see, and be best seen by his audience. 



CHAP. XVI. 

— If you will have any objection, — said 
my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop. 
— Not in the least, replied Dr. Slop : — for 
it does not appear on which side of the 
question it is wrote — it may be a composi- 
tion of a Divine of our church, as well aa 

yours; so that we run equal risks. 

'Tis wrote upon neither side, quoth Trim, 
for 'tis only upon Conscience, an' please 
your Honors. 

Trim's reason put his audience into good- 
humor, — all but Dr. Slop, who, turning hid 
head about towards Trim, looked a little 
angry. 

Begin, Trim, — and read distinctly, quoth 
my father. — I will, an' please your Honor, 
replied the Corporal; making a bow, and 
bespeaking attention with a slight move- 
ment of his right hand. 



CHAP. XVII. 



But before the Corporal be<? ins, I 

must first give you a description of his atti 
tude ; — otherwise he will naturally stand 
represented, by your imagination, in an 
uneasy posture, — stiff, — perpendicular — 6 s 
viding the weight of his body equally upon 
both legs; — his eye fixed, as if on duty ;• 
his look determined, clenching the sermon 
in his left hand, like his firelock. in * 



58 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



word, you would be apt to paint Trim as if I 
ne was standing in his platoon ready for ac 
tion. — His attitude was as unlike all this as 
you can conceive. 

He stood before them with his body sway- 
ed and bent forwards, just so far as to make 
an angle of 85 degrees and a half upon the 
plain of the horizon ; — which sound orators, 
to whom I address this, know very well to 
be the true persuasive angle of incidence ; 
— in any other angle you may talk and 
preach ; — 'tis certain ; — and it is done every 
day; — but with what effect, — I leave the 
world to judge ! 

The necessity of this precise angle of 85 
degrees and a half to a mathematical ex- 
actness, — does it not show us, by the way, 
how the arts and sciences mutually befriend 
each other 1 

How the deuce Corporal Trim, who 
knew not so much as an acute angle from 
an obtuse one, came to hit it so exactly ; — 
or whether it was chance or nature, or good 
sense, or imitation, <$fc. shall be commented 
upon in that part of the Cyclopaedia of Arts 
and Sciences, where the instrumental parts 
of the eloquence of the senate, the pulpit, 
and the bar, the coffee-house, the bed-cham- 
ber, and fireside, fall under consideration. 

He stood, — for I repeat it, to take the 
picture of him in at one view, with his body 
swayed, and somewhat bent forwards ; — his 
right leg from under him, sustaining seven- 
eighths of his whole weight, the foot of 

his left leg, the defect of which was no 
disadvantage to his attitude, advanced a 
little, — not laterally, nor forwards, but in a 
line betwixt them ; — his knee bent, but that 
not violently, — but so as to fall within the 
limits of the line of beauty; — and I add, of 
the line of science too; for consider, it had 
one eighth part of his body to bear up ; — so 
that in this case the position of the leg is 
determined, — because the foot could be no 
farther advanced, or the knee more bent, 
than what would allow him mechanically to 
receive an eighth part of his whole weight 
under it, and to carry it too. 

0^r°This I recommend to painters; — 
need I add, to orators ! — I think not : for 

unless they practise it, they must fall 

upon their noses. 

So much for Corporal Trim's body and 
Jt'gs He held the sermon loosely, not 



carelessly, in his left hand, raised something 
abo\ 3 his stomach, and detached a little 
from his breast ; — his right arm falling neg 
ligently by his side, as nature and the laws 

of gravity ordered it, but with the palm 

of it open and turned towards his audience, 
ready to aid the sentiment, in case it stood 
in need. 

Corporal Trim's eyes and the muscles of 
his face were in full harmony with the other 
parts of him ; — he looked frank, — uncon- 
strained, — something assured, — but not bor- 
dering upon assurance. 

Let not the critic ask how Corporal Trim 
could come by all this — I've told him it 
should be explained ; — but so he stood be- 
fore my father, my uncle Toby, and Dr. 
Slop; — so swayed his body, so contrasted 
his limbs, and with such an oratorical sweep 
throughout the whole figure, — a statuary 
might have modelled from it ; — nay, I doubt 
whether the oldest Fellow of a College, — 
or the Hebrew Professor himself, could 
have much mended it. 

Trim made a bow, and read as follows :— 

THE SERMON. 

Hebrews, xiii. 18. 

For we trust we have a good Conscience. 

" Trust ! — Trust we have a good con- 
" science !" 

[Certainly, Trim, quoth my father, inter- 
rupting him, you give that sentence a very 
improper accent ; for you curl up your nose, 
man, and read it with such a sneering tone, 
as if the Parson was going to abuse the 
Apostle. 

He is, an' please your Honor, replied 
Trim. Pugh! said my father, smiling. 

Sir, quoth Dr. Slop, Trim is certainly in 
the right ; for the writer (who I perceive is 
a Protestant) by the snappish manner in 
which he takes up the apostle, is certainly 
going to abuse him ; — if this treatment of 
him has not done it already. But from 
whence, replied my father, have you con- 
cluded so soon, Dr. Slop, that the writer is 
of our church — for aught I can see yet, — 
he may be of any church. Because, an- 
swered Dr. Slop, if he was of ours, he durst 
no more take such a license, than a bea* 
by his beard. If, in our communion, Sir, a 
man was to insult an apostle, — a saint,-— or 



even the paring of a saint's nail, — he would 
have his eyes scratched out. — What, hy the 
saint] quoth my uncle Toby. No, replied 
Dr. Slop, he would have an old house over 
his head. Pray is the Inquisition an ancient 
building, answered my uncle Toby, or is it 
a modern one? — I know nothing of archi- 
tecture, replied Dr. Slop.— An' please your 
Honor, quoth Trim, the Inquisition is the 
vilest — Prithee spare thy description, Trim, 
I hate the very name of it, said my father. 
— No matter for that, answered Dr. Slop, — 
it has its uses : for though I'm no great ad- 
vocate for it, yet in such a case as this, he 
would soon be taught better manners ; and 
I can tell him, if he went on at that rate, 
would be flung into the Inquisition for his 
pains. God help him then, quoth my uncle 
Toby. Amen, added Trim; for Heaven 
above knows, I have a poor brother who has 
been fourteen years a captive in it. I never 
heard one word of it before, said my uncle 
Toby, hastily : — how came he there, Trim 1 
— O, Sir, the story will make your heart 
bleed, — as it has made mine a thousand 
times : — but it is too long to be told now; — 
your Honor shall hear it from first to last 
some day when I am working beside you in 

our fortifications ; but the short of the 

story is this — that my brother Tom went 
over a servant to Lisbon, — and then mar- 
ried a Jew's widow who kept a small shop, 
and sold sausages, which, somehow or other, 
was the cause of his being taken in the 
middle of the night out of his bed, where 
he was lying with his wife and two small 
children, and carried directly to the Inqui- 
sition, where, God help him, continued 
Trim, fetching a sigh from the bottom of 
his heart, — the poor honest lad lies confined 
at this hour. He was as honest a soul, 
added Trim, (pulling out his handkerchief) 
as ever blood warmed. — 

— The tears trickled down Trim's cheeks 
faster than he could well wipe them away. 
— A deaa snence m the room ensued for 
eome minutes. — Certain proof of pity! 

Come, Trim, quoth my father, after he 
saw the poor fellow's grief had got a little 
vent, — read on, — and put this melancholy 
story out of thy head; — I grieve that I in- 
terrupted thee ; but prithee begin the ser- 
mon again ; — for if the first sentence in it 
,s matter of abuse, as thou say est, I have a 
H 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 5 

great desire to know what kind of provoca- 
tion the apostle has given. 

Corporal Trim wiped his face, and re- 
turned his handkerchief into his pocket, 
and making a bow as he did it, — lie began 
attain. 



THE SERMON. 

Hebrews, xiii. 18. 

For we trust we have a good Conscience. 

" Trust ! — Trust we have a good con- 
" science ! Surely, if there is any thing in 
" this life which a man may depend upon, 
" and to the knowledge of which he is ca- 
" pable of arriving upon the most indisputa- 
" ble evidence, it must be this very thing, — 
" whether he has a good conscience or no." 

[I am positive I am right, quoth Dr. Slop.] 

" If a man thinks at all, he cannot well 
" be a stranger to the true state of this 
" account : — he must be privy to his own 
" thoughts and desires ; — he must remem- 
" ber his past pursuits, and know certainly 
" the true springs and motives, which, in 
" general, have governed the actions of his 
" life." 

[I defy him, without an assistant, quoth 
Dr. Slop.] 

" In other matters we may be deceived 
" by false appearances ; and, as the wise 
" man complains, hardly do we guess aright 
" at the things that are upon the earth , 
" and with labor do we find the things that 
" are before us. But here the mind has all 
"the evidence and facts within herself; — 
" is conscious of the web she has wove ;— 
" knows its texture and fineness, and the 
" exact share which every passion has had 
" in working upon the several designs 
" which virtue or vice has planned before 
" her." 

[The language is good; and I declare 
Trim reads very well, quoth my father.] 

"Now, — as conscience is nothing else 
"but the knowledge which the mind has 
" within herself of this ; and the judgment, 
" either of approbation or censure, which it 
" unavoidably makes upon the successive 
"actions of our lives; 'tis plain, you will 
" say, from the very terms of the proposi- 
tion, — whenever this inward testimony 
"goes against a man, and he stands se.H 
"accused, that he must necessarily be a 



5S 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



" guilty man. — An 1 on the contrary, when 
the report is favcrablc on his side, and his 
" heart condemns him not, — that it is not a 
" matter of trust, as the apostle intimates, 
" but a matter of certainty and fact, that 
*' the conscience is good, and that the man 
" must be good also." 

[Then the apostle is altogether in the 
wrong, I suppose, quoth Dr. Slop ; and the 
Protestant divine is in the right. Sir, have 
patience, replied my father, for I think it 
will presently appear that St. Paul and the 
Protestant divine are both of an opinion. — 
As nearly so, quoth Dr. Slop, as east is to 
west ; — But this, continued he, lifting both 
hands, comes from the liberty of the press. 
It is no more, at the worst, replied my 
uncle Toby, than the liberty of the pulpit ; 
for it does not appear that the sermon is 
printed, or ever likely to be. 
Go on, Trim, quoth my father.] 
"At first sight this may seem to be a true 
" state of the case : and I make no doubt 
" but the knowledge of right and wrong is 
" so truly impressed upon the mind of man, 
M — that did no such thing ever happen, as 
** that the conscience of a man, by long 
' habits of sin, might (as the scripture a& 
" sures it may) insensibly become hard ; — 
*' and, like some tender parts of his body, 
" by much stress and continued hard usage, 
" lose by degrees that nice sense and per- 
** ception with which God and nature en- 
" dowed it : — did this never happen ; — or 
" was it certain that self-love could never 
" hang the least bias upon the judgment : — 
" or that the little interests below could rise 
" up and perplex the faculties of our upper 
" regions, and encompass them about with 
" clouds and thick darkness : — Could no 
" such thing as favor and affection enter this 
w sacred court: — Did Wit disdain to take a 
*' bribe in it ; — or was ashamed to show its 
M face as an advocate for an unwarrantable 
" enjoyment : or lastly, were we assured 
M that Interest stood always unconcerned 
'* whilst the cause was hearing — and that 
Passion never got into the judgment-seat, 
M and pronounced sentence in the stead of 
** Reason, which is supposed always to pre- 

• side and determine upon the case: — was 

• this trulv so, as the objection must sup- 
"pose; — no doubt then the religious and 
' raor&i state of a man would be exactly 



" what he himself esteemed it : — and the 
"guilt, or innocence of every man's life 
" could be known, in general, by no better 
" measure, than the degrees of his own 
" approbation and censure." 

" I own, in one case, whenever a man's 
" conscience does accuse him (as it seldom 
" errs on that side) that he is guilty ; and 
"unless in melancholy and hypochondriac 
" cases, we may safely pronounce upon it, 
" that there is always sufficient grounds for 
" the accusation. 

"But the converse of the proposition will 
"not hold true; — namely, that whenever 
" there is guilt, the conscience must accuse ; 
" and if it does not, that a man is therefore 

" innocent. This is not fact. So that 

" the common consolation which some good 
" christian or other is hourly administering 
" to himself, — that he thanks God his mind 
"does not misgive him; and that? conse- 
" quently, he has a good conscience, because 
" he hath a quiet one, — is fallacious ; — and 
"as current as the inference is, and as 
" infallible as the rule appears at first sight, 
" yet when you look nearer to it, and try 
"the truth of this rule upon plain facts 
" — you see it liable to so much error from 
" a false application ; the principle upon 
" which it goes so often perverted ; — the 
" whole force of it lost, and sometimes so 
"vilely cast away, that it is painful to pro- 
"duce the common examples of human life, 
" which confirm the account. 

" A man shall be vicious and utterly de- 

" bauched in his principles ; — exceptionable 

" in his conduct to the world ; shall live 

"shameless, in the open commission of a 

" sin which no reason or pretence can jus- 

" tify, — a sin by which, contrary to all the 

workings of humanity, he shall ruin for 

" ever the deluded partner of his guilt ; — 

" rob her of her best dowry ; and not only 

cover her own head with dishonor ; — but 

involve a whole virtuous family in shame 

and dishonor for her sake. Surely, you 

" will think Conscience must lead such a 

man a troublesome life ; he can have no 

"rest night or day from its reproaches. 

"Alas! Conscience had something else 

to do all this time, than break in upon 

him: as Elijah reproached the god Baal, 

this domestic god was cither talking, 

or pursuing, or was tm a journey, or 



OF 1RISTRAM SHANDY. 



59 



'* peradvenlure he slept, and could not be 
" awoke. 

" Perhaps he was gone out in company 
1 with Honor, to fight a duel ; to pay off 
" some debt at play ; — or dirty annuity, the 
" bargain of his lust. Perhaps Conscience 
" all this time was engaged at home, talking 
"aloud against petty larceny, and exe- 
cuting vengeance upon some such puny 
" crimes, as his fortune and rank of life se- 
" cured him against all temptation of com- 

" mitting ; so that he lives as merrily " 

[If he was of our church, though, quoth Dr. 
Slop, he could not] — " sleeps as soundly in 
" his bed ; — and at last meets death as un- 
" concernedly ! — perhaps mucli more so than 
" a much better man." 

[All this is impossible with us, quoth Dr. 
Slop, turning to my father; — the case could 
not happen in our church. — It happens in 
ours, however, replied my father, but too 

often. 1 own, quoth Dr. Slop, (struck a 

little with my father's frank acknowledg- 
ment) — that a man in the Romish church 
may live as badly ; — but then he cannot 

easily die so. 'Tis little matter, replied 

my father, with an air of indifference, how 
a rascal dies. — I mean, answered Dr. Slop, 
he would be denied the benefits of the last 
sacraments. — Pray, how many have you in 
all, said my uncle Toby, — for I always for- 
get? Seven, answered Dr. Slop. 

Humph ! — said my uncle Toby ; — though not 
accented as a note of acquiescence, but as 
an interjection of that particular species of 
surprise, when a man, in looking into a 
drawer, finds more of a thing than he ex- 
pected, Humph ! replied my uncle Toby. 

Dr. Slop, who had an ear, understood my 
uncle Toby as well as if he had wrote a 
whole volume against the seven sacraments. 

Humph ! replied Dr. Slop (stating my 

uncle Toby's argument over again to him) 
— Why, Sir, are there not seven cardinal 
virtues ! — seven mortal sins ? — seven gold- 
en candlesticks'? — seven heavens? 'Tis 

more than I know, replied my uncle Toby. 

Are there not seven wonders of the 

world ? — seven days of the creation ? — seven 

planets ? — seven plagues 1 That there 

are, quoth my father, with a most affected 
gravity. But prithee, continued he, go on 
with the rest of thy characters, Trim.] 

"Another is sordid, unmerciful," (here 



Trim waved his right hand) "a strait- 
" hearted selfish wretch, incapable either of 
"private friendship or public spirit. Take 
" notice how he passes by the widow and 
" orphan in their distress, and sees all the 
"miseries incident to human life without 
"a sigh or a prayer." [An' please your 
Honors, cried Trira, I think this a viler 
man than the other.] 

"Shall not conscience rise up and sting 
"him on such occasions ? — No; thank God, 
" there is no occasion, I pay every man his 
" own ; — J have no fornication to answer 
" to my conscience; — no faithless vows or 
" promises to make up ; — / have debauched 
"no man's wife or child. Thank God, 1 
" am not as other men, adulterers, unjust, 
" or even as this libertine, who stands before 
"me. 

" A third is crafty and designing in his 
" nature. View his whole life ; — 'tis nothing 
" but a cunning contexture of dark arts and 
" unequitable subterfuges, basely to defeat 
" the true intent of all laws, — plain dealing, 
" and the safe enjoyment of our several prop- 

" erties. You will see such a one work- 

" ing out a frame of little designs upon the 
" ignorance and perplexities of the poor and 
" needy man ; — shall raise a fortune upon 
" the inexperience of a youth, or the unsus- 
" pecting temper of his friend, who would 
" have trusted him with his life. 

"When old age comes on, and repent- 
" ance calls him to look back upon this black 
" account, and state it over again with his 
"conscience, — Conscience looks into the 
"Statutes at Large; — finds no express 
" law broken by what he has done ; — per- 
"ceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods 
" and chattels incurred ; — sees no scourge 
" waving over his head, or prison opening 
"its gates upon him: — What is there to 
" affright his conscience ? — Conscience has 
" got safely entrenched behind the Lettei 
"of the Law; sits there invulnerable, for- 
" titled with <£aSCS and i&CportS, so 
" strongly on all sides, — that it is not preach- 
" ing can dispossess it of its hold." 

[Here Corporal Trim" and my uncle Toby 
exchanged looks with each other. — Ay, ay, 
Trim ! quoth my uncle Toby, shaking hia 

head, these are but sorry fortifications. 

Trim. O ! very poor work, answered 

Trim, to what your Honor and I make of 



60 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



it The character of this last man, said 

Dr. Slop, interrupting- Trim, is more de- 
testable than all the rest; and seems to 
have been taken from some pettifogging 
Lawyer amongst you. Amongst us, a man's 
conscience could not possibly continue so 
long blinded; three times in a year, at least, 
he must go to confession. Will that re- 
store it to sight.] quoth my uncle Toby. 

Go on, Trim, quoth my father, or Oba- 

diah will have got back before thou hast 

got to the end of thy sermon. 'Tis a 

very short one, replied Trim. 1 wish it 

was longer, quoth my uncle Toby, for I like 
it hugely. — Trim went on.] 

"A fourth man shall want even this 
" refuge ; — shall break through all the cere- 
" mony of slow chicane ; — scorns the doubt- 
" ful workings of secret plots and cautious 
"trains to bring about his purpose: — see 
" the barefaced villain, how he cheats, lies, 
" perjures, robs, murders ! — Horrid ! — But 
" indeed much better was not to be expect- 
ed in the present case, — the poor man 
" was in the dark ! — his priest had got the 

" keeping of his conscience ; and all he 

** would let him know of it, was, That he 
" must believe in the Pope, — go to mass, — 
" cross himself, — tell his beads, — be a good 
•* Catholic ; and that this, in all conscience, 
" was enough to carry him to heaven. 
" What ! — if he perjures? — Why, — he had 
"a mental reservation in it. — But if he is 
" so wicked and abandoned a wretch as you 
" represent him ; — if he robs, — if he stabs, 
"will not conscience, on every such act, 
"receive a wound itself] — Ay, — but the 
" man has carried it to confession ; — the 
" wound digests there, and will do well 
" enough, and in a short time be quite healed 
" up by absolution. O Popery ! what hast 
"thou to answer for! — when, not content 
" with the too many natural and fatal ways, 
" thro' which the heart of man is every day 
" thus treacherous to itself above all things, 
" — thou hast wilfully set open the wide 
u gate of deceit before the face of this un- 
" wary traveller, — too apt, God knows, to 

go astray of himself, and confidently speak 
"peace to himself, when there is no peace. 

" Of this the common instances which I 
** have drawn out of life, are too notorious 

to require much evidence. If any man 

doubts the reality of them, or thinks it 



" impossible for a man to be such a bubble 
" to himself, — I must refer him a moment to 
" his own reflections, and will then venture 
" to trust my appeal with his own heart. 

" Let him consider in how different a de- 
" gree of detestation, numbers of wicked 
"actions stand there, though equally bad 
"and vicious in their own natures; — he 
" will soon find, that such of them as strong 
" inclination and custom have prompted him 
" to commit, are generally dressed out and 
" painted with all the false beauties which 
"a soft and a flattering hand can give 
" them ; — and that the others, to which he 
" feels no propensity, appear at. once naked 
"and deformed, surrounded with all the 
" true circumstances of folly and dishonor. 

"When David surprised Saul sleeping 
" in the cave, and cut off the skirt of his 
" robe, — we read that his heart smote him 
" for what he had done : — but in the matter 
"of Uriah, where a faithful and gallant 
" servant, whom he ought to have loved and 

" honored, fell to make way for his lust, 

" where conscience had so much greater 
" reason to take the alarm, his heart smote 
" him not. A whole year had almost passed 
" from the first commission of that crime, 
" to the time Nathan was sent to reprove 
" him ; and we read not once of the least 
" sorrow or compunction of heart which he 
" testified, during all that time, for what he 
" had done. 

" Thus Conscience, this once able moni- 
" tor, — placed on high as a judge within us, 
" and intended by our Maker as a just and 
" equitable one too, — by an unhappy train 
"of causes and impediments, takes often 
" such imperfect cognizance of what passes, 
" — does its office so negligently, — some- 
" times so corruptly, — that it is not to be 
" trusted alone ; and therefore we find there 
"is a necessity, an absolute necessity, of 
"joining another principle with it, to aid, 
" if not govern, its determinations. 

" So that, if you would form a just judg- 
" ment of what is of infinite importance to 
" you not to be misled in, — nanrely, in what t 
"degree of real merit you stand, either as< 
" an honest man, an useful citizen, a faith- 
" ful subject to your king, or a good servant I 
"to your God, call in religion and morality 
" Look : what is written in the law of God ' ' 
" — How readest thou? — Consult calm rea 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



01 



"son and the unchangeable obligations of 
"justice and truth; what say they] 

" Let Conscience determine the matter 
' upon these reports ; — and then if thy heart 
"condemns thee not, which is the case the 
" apostle supposes, — the rule will be infal- 
lible ;— [Here Dr. Slop fell asleep]— 
"thou wilt have confidence towards God ; 
" — that is, have just grounds to believe the 
"judgment thou hast past upon thyself, is 
"the judgment of God; and nothing else 
" but an anticipation of that righteous sen- 
" tence which will be pronounced upon thee 
" hereafter, by that Being to whom thou art 
"finally to give an account of thy actions. 

" Blessed is the man, indeed, then, as the 
" author of the book of Ecclesiasticus ex- 
" presses it, who is not pricked with the 
"multitude of his sins: blessed is the man 
" whose heart hath not condemned him ; 
'* whether he be rich, or whether he be poor, 
" if he have a good heart (a heart thus 
" guided and informed) he shall at all times 
" rejoice in a cheerful countenance ; his 
" mind shall tell him more than seven 
" watchmen that sit above upon a tower on 
" high. — [A tower has no strength, quoth 
my uncle Toby, unless 'tis flanked.] — "In 
"the darkest doubts it shall conduct him 
" safer than a thousand casuists, and give 
" the state he lives in a better security for 
' his behavior than all the causes and 
"restrictions put together, which law-tna- 
"kers are forced to multiply -.—forced, I 
"say, as things stand; human laws not 
" being a matter of original choice, but of 
'' pure necessity, brought in to fence against 
" the mischievous effects of those con- 
sciences which are no law unto them- 
4 selves ; well intending, by the many pro- 
»' visions made, — that in all such corrupt 
**and misguided cases, where principles and 
" the checks of conscience will not make 
"us upright, — to supply their force, and, 
" by the terrors of gaols and halters, oblige 
" us to it." 

[I see plainly, said my father, that this 
sermon has been composed to be preached 
%t the Temple, — or at some Assize. — I like 
vhe reasoning, — and am sorry that Dr. Slop 
ias fallen asleep before the time of his con- 
viction ; —for it is now clear, that the Par- 
son, as I thought at first, never insulted St. 
Paul in the least ;— nor has there been, 



brother, the least difference between them 

A great matter, if they had differed 

replied my uncle Toby! — the best friends 

in the world may differ sometimes. ■ 

True, — brother Toby, quoth my father, 
shaking hands with him, — we'll fill our 
pipes, brother, and then Trim shall go on. 

Well, — what dost thou think of it ? said 
my father, speaking to Corporal Trim, as 
he reached his tobacco-box. 

I think, answered the Corporal, that the 
seven watchmen upon the tower, — who, I 
suppose, are all sentinels there, — are more, 
an' please your Honor, than were neces- 
sary; — and, to go on at that rate, would 
harass a regiment all to pieces, which a 
command ing-officer, who loves his men, will 
never do, if he can help it ; because two 
sentinels, added the Corporal, are as good 
as twenty. — I have been a commanding- 
officer myself in the Corps de Garde, a 
hundred times, continued Trim, rising an 
inch higher in his figure, as he spoke ; — 
and all the time I had the honor to serve 
his Majesty King William, in relieving the 
most considerable posts, I never left more 

than two in my life. Very right, Trim, 

quoth my uncle Toby ; — but you do not con- 
sider, Trim, that the towers, in Solomon's 
days, were not such things as our bastions, 
flanked and defended by other works. — 
This, Trim, was an invention since Solo- 
mon's death ; nor had they horn-works, or 
ravelins before the curtain, in his time ; — 
or such a fosse as we make with a cuvette 
in the middle of it, and with covered ways 
and counterscarps pallisadoed along it, to 
guard against a coup de main : — so that the 
seven men upon the tower were a party, 1 
dare say, from the Corps de Garde, set 
there, not only to look out, but to defend it. 

They could be no more, an' please 

your Honor, than a corporal's guard. 

My father smiled inwardly, but not out- 
wardly ; — the subject being rather too se- 
rious, considering what had happened, to 
make a jest of: — so putting his pipe into 
his mouth, which he had just lighted, — he 
contented himself with ordering Trim to 
read on. He read on as follows : — ] 

"To have the fear of God before oiu 
"eyes, and, in our mutual dealings with 
"each other, to govern our actions by tii« 
" eternal measures of right and wrong ;- 
6 



02 



LIFE AN.; OPINIONS 



" the first of these will comprehend the du- 
" ties of religion , — the second, those of 
"morality, which are so inseparably con- 
nected together, that you cannot divide 
" these two tables, even in imagination 
"(though the attempt is often made in 
" practice) without breaking and mutually 
" destroying them both. 

" I said the attempt is often made ; and so 
" it is ; — there being nothing more common 
"than to see a man who has no sense at 
" all of religion, and indeed has so much 
" honesty as to pretend to none, who would 
" take it as the bitterest affront, should you 
" but hint at a suspicion of his moral char- 
acter, — or imagine he was not conscien- 
" tiously just and scrupulous to the utter- 
" most mite. 

" When there is some appearance that it 
"is so, — though one is unwilling even to 
"suspect the appearance of so amiable a 
" virtue as moral honesty, yet were we to 
" look into the grounds of it, in the present 
" case, I am persuaded we should find little 
" reason to envy such a one the honor of 
" his motive. 

" Let him declaim as pompously as he 
'chooses upon the subject, it will be found 
"to rest upon no better foundation than 
* either his interest, his pride, his ease, or 
'some such little and changeable passion 
*' as will give us but small dependence upon 
" his actions in matters of great distress. 

" I will illustrate this by an example. 

" I know the banker I deal with, or the 
"physician I usually call in," — [There is 
no need, cried Dr. Slop, waking, to call in 
any physician in this case] — " to be neither 
"of them men of much religion: I hear 
"them make a jest of it every day, and 
' treat all its sanctions with so much scorn, 
' as to put the matter past doubt. Well ; 
" — notwithstanding this, I put my fortune 
" into the hands of the one : — and what is 
** dearer still to me, I trust my life to the 
'•honest skill of the other. 

" Now, let me examine what is my rea- 
son for this great confidence. Why, in 
' the first place, I believe there is no proba- 
" bility that either of them will employ the 
•' power I put into their hands to my disad- 
*' vantage ; — I consider that honesty serves 
' toe purposes of this life. — I know their 
' success m the world depends upon the 



"fairness of their characters. — In a word, 
" I'm persuaded that they cannot hurt me; 
" without hurting themselves more. 

" But put it otherwise ; namely, that in- 
terest lay, for once, on the other side; 
"that a case should happen, wherein the 
" one, without stain to his reputation, could 
" secrete my fortune, and leave me naked 
"in the world; — or that the other could 
" send me out of it, and enjoy an estate by 
" my death, without dishonor to himself or 
" his art ; — in this case, what hold have I 
"of either of them 1 — Religion, the strong- 
" est of all motives, is out of the question, 
" — interest, the next most powerful motive 

" in the world, is strongly against me : 

" What have I left tc cast into the opposite 

"scale, to balance this temptation? 

"Alas! I have nothing — nothing but what 

" is lighter than a bubble. 1 must lie at 

" the mercy of Honor, or some such capri- 
" cious principle, — strait security for two of 
" the most valuable blessings ! — my property 
11 and my life. 

" As therefore we can have no depend- 
" ence upon morality without religion ; — 
" so, on the other hand, — there is nothing 
" better to be expected from religion, with- 
" out morality ; nevertheless, 'tis no prodigy 
" to see a man whose real moral character 
" stands very low, who yet entertains the 
" highest notion of himself in the light of a 
" religious man. 

" He shall not only be covetous, revenge- 
"ful, implacable, — but even wanting in 
" points of common honesty ; yet inasmuch 
" as he talks aloud against the infidelity of 
"the age, — is zealous for some points of 
" religion, — goes twice a day to church, — 
" attends the sacraments, — and amuses him- 
" self with a few instrumental parts of reli- 
"gion, — shall cheat his conscience into a 
"judgment, that, for this, he is a religious 
" man, and has discharged truly his duty to 
" God : and you will find that such a man, 
" through force of this delusion, generally 
" looks down with spiritual pride upon every 
"other man who has less affectation of 
"piety, — though, perhaps, ten times more 
" real honesty, than himself. 

" This likewise is a sore evil under the 
" sun ; and, I believe, there is no one mis- 
" taken principle, which, frr its time, has 
" wrought more serious mischiefs. For 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 



03 



"a general proof of this, — examine the 
•* history of the Romish church ;" — [Well, 
what can you make of that ! cried Dr. Slop] 
" see what scenes of cruelty, murder, rap- 
1 ine, bloodshed," — [They may thank their 
own obstinacy, cried Dr. Slop] — " have all 
" been sanctified by a religion not strictly 
" governed by morality ! 

" In how many kingdoms of the world" — 
[Here Trim kept waving his right hand 
from the sermon to the extent of his arm, 
returning it backwards and forwards to the 
conclusion of the paragraph.] 

" In how many kingdoms of the world 
" has the crusading sword of this misguided 
" saint-errant spared neither age, or merit, 
" or sex, or condition ? — and, as he fought 
" under the banners of a religion which set 
" him loose from justice and humanity, he 
" showed none ; mercilessly trampled upon 
" both, — heard neither the cries of the un- 
" fortunate, nor pitied their distresses !" 

[I have been in many a battle, an' please 
your Honor, quoth Trim, sighing, but never 
in so melancholy a one as this: — I would 
not have drawn a trigger in it against these 
poor souls, — to have been made a 'general 

officer. Why ? what do you understand 

of the affair ] said Dr. Slop, looking towards 
Trim, with something more of contempt 
than the Corporal's honest heart deserved. 

What do you know, friend, about this 

battle you talk of? 1 know, replied 

Trim, that I never refused quarter in my 
life to any man who cried out for it: — but 
to a woman or a child, continued Trim, be- 
fore I would level my musket at them, I 

would lose my life a thousand times. 

Here's a crown for thee, Trim, to drink 
with Obadiah to-night, quoth my uncle 
Toby; and I'll give Obadiah another too. 

God bless your Honor, replied Trim, — 

I had rather these poor women and children 

had it. Thou art an honest fellow, quoth 

my uncle Toby. My father nodded his 

:ii-ad, as much as to say, — And so he is. 

But prithee, Trim, said my father, make 
an end, — for I see thou hast but a leaf or 
two left. 

Corporal Trim read on.] ' 

" If the testimony of past centuries in 
" this matter is not sufficient, — consider at 
" this instant, how the votaries of that re- 
" iigion are eve--^ day thinking to do ser- 



" vice and nonor to God, by actions which 
" are a dishonor and scandal to themselves! 

"To be convinced of this, go with me for 
" a moment into the prisons of the Inquisi- 
" tion." — [God help my poor brother Tom.] 
— " Behold Religion, with mercy and Jus- 
" tice chained down under her feet, — there 
"sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, 
" propped up with racks and instruments of 
" torment. — Hark ! — hark ! — what a piteous 
" groan !" — [Here Trim's face turned aa 

pale as ashes.] "See the melancholy 

" wretch who uttered it " — [Here the tears 

.began to trickle down] "just brought 

" forth to undergo the anguish of a mock 
" trial, and endure the utmost pains that a 
" studied system of cruelty has been able 

"to invent." [D— n them all, quoth 

Trim, his color returning into his face as 
red as blood.] — " Behold this helpless victim 
" delivered up to his tormentors, — hi.5 body 
"so wasted with sorrow and confinement!" 
— [Oh! 'tis my brother, cried poor Trim, 
in a most passionate exclamation, dropping 
the sermon upon the ground, and clapping 
his hands together — I fear 'tis poor Tom. 

My father's and my uncle Toby's heart 

yearned with sympathy for the poor fellow's 
distress ; even Slop himself acknowledged 

pity for him. Why, Trim, said my 

father, this is not a history, — 'tis a sermon 
thou art reading; prithee begin the sen- 
tence again.] "Behold this helpless vic- 

" tim delivered up to his tormentors,— his 
" body so wasted with sorrow and confine- 
" ment, you will see every nerve and mus» 
" cle as it suffers. 

"Observe the last movement of that 
" horrid engine !" — [I would rather face a 
cannon, quoth Trim, stamping.] — " See 
" what convulsions it has thrown him into! 
" — Consider the nature of the posture in 
" which he now lies stretched ! — what ex 
"quisite tortures he endures by it!" — [f 
hope 'tis not in Portugal.] — "'Tis all nature 
"can bear! Good God! see how he Keeps 
" his weary soul hanging upon his trembling 
11 lips!" — [I would not read another line of 
it, quoth Trim, for all this world! — I fear, 
an' please your Honors, all this is in Portu- 
gal, where my poor brother Tom is. 1 

tell thee, Trim, again, quoth my father, 'tin 
not an historical account, — 'tis a description. 
— 'Tis only a description, honest man cmoth 



G4 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



Slop; there's not a word of truth in it. 

That's another story, replied my father. 

However, as Trim reads it with so 

much concern, — 'tis cruelty to force him to 
go on with it. — Give me hold of the ser- 
mon, Trim, — I'll finish it for thee, and thou 

may'st go. 1 must stay and hear it too, 

replied Trim, if your Honor will allow me ; 
— though I would not read it myself for a 

Colonel's pay. Poor Trim, quoth my 

uncle Toby. My father went on.] 

" Consider the nature of the posture 

u in which he now lies stretched ! — what 
" exquisite torture he endures by it ! — 'Tis 
" all nature can bear ! Good God ! See how 
" it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his 
" trembling lips, — willing to take its leave, 
" — but not suffered to depart ; — Behold the 
'* unhappy wretch led back to his cell !" 

[Then, thank God, however, quoth 

Trim, they have not killed him.] " See him 
" dragged out of it again to meet the flames, 
•• and the insults in his last agonies, which 
'• this principle, — this principle, that there 
" can be religion without mercy, has pre- 
pared for him!" [Then, thank God, 

he is dead, quoth Trim, — he is out of his 
pain, and they have done their worst at him. 

— O Sirs ! Hold your peace, Trim, said 

my father, going on with the sermon, lest 
Trim should incense Dr. Slop, — we shall 
never have done at this rate.] 

" The surest way to try the merit of any 
" disputed notion is, to trace down the con- 
" sequences such a notion has produced, and 
" compare them with the spirit of christian- 
" ity ; — 'tis the short and decisive rule which 
" our Savior hath left us for these and such 
" like cases, and it is worth a thousand ar- 
" guments — By their fruits ye shall know 
" them. 

" I will add no farther to the length of 
" this sermon, thar by two or three short 
u and independent rules deducible from it. 

"First, Whenever a man talks loudly 
** against religion, always suspect that it is 
" not his reason, but his passions, which 
" have got the better of his Creed. A bad 
" life and a good belief are disagreeable and 
" troublesome neighbors : and where they 
'* separate, depend upon it, 'tis for no other 
u cause but quietness' sake. 

" Secondly, When a man, thus repre- 
" sented, tells you in any particular in- 



stance, — that such a thing goes against 
his conscience — always believe he means 
exactly the same thing as when he tells 
you such a thing goes against his stomach ; 
— a present want of appetite being gene- 
rally the true cause of both. 
" In a word, — trust that man in nothing, 
who has not a Conscience in every thing. 
" And in your own case, remember this 
plain distinction, a mistake in which has 
ruined thousands, — that your conscience 
is not a law :— no, God and reason made 
the law, and have placed conscience 
within you to determine ; — not, like an 
Asiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and 
flows of his own passions, — but like a 
British judge in this land of liberty and 
good sense,, who makes no new law, but 
faithfully declares that law which he 
; knows already written." 



Thou hast read the sermon extremely 

well, Trim, quoth my father. If he had 

spared his comments, replied Dr. Slop,-- 

he would have read it much better. 1 

should have read it ten times better, Sir, an- 
swered Trim, but that my heart was so full. 
That was the very reason, Trim, re- 
plied my father, which has made thee read 
the sermon as well as thou hast done ; and 
if the clergy of our church, continued my 
father, ad-dressing himself to Dr. Slop, 
would take part in what they deliver as 
deeply as this poor fellow has done, — as 
their compositions are fine; — [I deny it, 
quoth Dr. Slop.] — I maintain it, — that the 
eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects 
to inflame it, would be a model for the 
whole world: — But alas! continued my 
father, and I own it, Sir, with sorrow, that, 
like French politicians in this respect, what 
they gain in the cabinet they lose in the 

field. 'Twere a pity, quoth my uncle, 

that this should be lost. 1 like the ser- 
mon well, replied my father, — 'tis dramatic; 
— and there is something in that way of 
writing, when skilfully managed, which 
catches the attention. — — We preacli much 
in that way with us, said Dr. Slop. — I 
know that very well, said my father, — but 
in a tone and manner which disgusted Dr. 
Slop, full as much as his assent, simply 



could have pleased him. But in this, 

added Dr. Slop, a little piqued, — our ser- 
mons have greatly the advantage, that we 
never introduce any character into them 
below a patriarch or a patriarch's wife, or 
ft martyr, or a saint. — There are some very 
Dad characters in this, however, said my 
father; and I do not think the sermon a jot 

the worse for 'em. But pray, quoth my 

uncle Toby, — whose can this be? — How- 
could it get into my Stevinus? A man 

must be as great a conjurer as Stevinus, 
said my father, to resolve the second ques- 
tion. The first, I think, is not so difficult; 
— for unless my judgment greatly deceives 
me, — I know the author ; for it was wrote, 
certainly, by the parson of the parish. 

The similitude of the style and manner 
of it, with those my father constantly had 
heard preached in his parish-church, was 
the ground of his conjecture, proving it 
as strongly as an argument a priori could 
prove such a thing to a philosophic mind, 
That it was Yorick's and no one's else. — 
It was proved to be so, a posteriori, the 
day after, when Yorick sent a servant to 
my uncle Toby's house to inquire after it. 

It seems that Yorick, who was inquisitive 
after all kinds of knowledge, had borrowed 
Stevinus of my uncle Toby, and had care- 
lessly popped his sermon, as soon as he had 
made it, into the middle of Stevinus ; and 
by an act of forgetfulness, to which he was 
ever subject, he had sent Stevinus home, 
and his sermon to keep him company. 

Ill-fated sermon ! Thou wast lost, after 
this recovery of thee, a second time, dropped 
thro' an unsuspected fissure in thy master's 
pocket, down into a treacherous and tattered 
lining, — trod deep into the dirt, by the left 
hind-foot of his Rosinante inhumanly step- 
ping upon thee as thou falledst ; — buried ten 
days in the mire, — raised up out of it by a 
beggar, — sold for a half-penny to a parish- 
clerk, transferred to his parson, — lost forever 
to thy own, the remainder of his days, — 
nor restored to his restless manes till this 
very moment that I tell the world the story. 

Can the reader believe that this sermon 
of Yorick's was preached at an assize, in 
the cathedral of York, before a thousand 
n'itnessps, ready to give oath of it, by a 
rertai > prebendary of that church, and ac- 
tually orinted by him when he had done ! — 
I 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 05 

and within so short a space as two year** 
and three months after Yorick's death ' — 
Yorick, indeed, was never better served in 
his life ; — but it was a little hard to mal- 
treat him after, and plunder him after he 
was laid in his grave. 

However, as the gentleman who did it. 
was in perfect charity with Yorick, — and, 
in conscious justice, printed but a few copies 
to give away ; — and that I am told, he could 
moreover have made as good a one himself, 
had he thought fit, — I declare I would not 
have published this anecdote to the world : 
— nor do I publish it with an intent to hurt 
his character and advancement in the church 
I leave that to others ; — but I find myself 
impelled by two reasons, which I cannot 
withstand. 

The first is, That in doing justice I may 
give rest to Yorick's ghost: — which, — as 
the country people, and some others, be- 
lieve, — still walks. 

The second reason is, That, by laying 
open this story to the world, I gain an op- 
portunity of informing it, — That in case 
the character of Parson Yorick, and the 
sample of his sermons, is liked, — there are 
now in the possession of the Shandy family, 
as many as will make a handsome volume, 
at the world's service : — and much cood 
may they do it 



CHAP. XVIII. 

Obadiah gained the two crowns without 
dispute; for he came in jingling with all 
the instruments in the green baize bag we 
spoke of, slung across his body, just as Cor- 
poral Trim went out of the room. 

It is now proper, I think, quoth Dr. Slop 
(clearing up his looks) as we are in a con- 
dition to be of some service to Mrs. Shandy, 
to send up stairs to know how she goes on. 

I have ordered, answered my father, the 
old midwife to come down to us upon the 
least difficulty; — for you must know, Dr. 
Slop, continued my father, with a peiple.\od 
kind of a smile upon his countenance, that 
by express treaty, solemnly ratified between 
me and my wife, you arc no more than an 
auxiliary in this affair, — and not so murh 
as that, — unlets the Jean old mother nf u 



G6 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



midwife above stairs cannot do without you. 
-Women have their particular fancies; 
«md in points of this nature, continued my 
father, where they bear the whole burden, 
and suffer so much acute pain for the ad- 
vantage of our families and the good of the 
species, — they claim a right of deciding", en 
Souveraines, in whose hands, and in what 
fashion, they choose to undergo it. 

They are in the right of it, — quoth my 

uncle Toby. But, Sir, replied Dr. Slop, 

not taking notice of my uncle Toby's opinion, 
but turning to my father, they had bet- 
ter govern in other points; — and a father 
of a family, who wishes its perpetuity, in 
my opinion, had better exchange this pre- 
rogative with them, and give up some other 

rights in lieu of it. 1 know not, quoth 

>my father, answering a little too testily, to 
be quite dispassionate in what he said ; — I 
know not, quoth he, what we have left to 
give up in lieu of who shall bring our chil- 
dren into the world, unless that, — of who 

shall beget them. One would almost 

give up any thing, replied Dr. Slop. 1 

beg your pardon, — answered my uncle Toby. 

Sir, replied Dr. Slop, it would astonish 

you to know what improvements we have 
made of late years in all branches of ob- 
stetrical knowledge, but particularly in that 
•one single point of the safe and expedi- 
tious extraction of the foetus, — which has 
received such lights, that, for my part (hold- 
ing up his hands) I declare, I wonder how 

the world has 1 wish, quoth my uncle 

Toby, you had seen what prodigious armies 
we had in Flanders. 



CHAP. XIX. 

1 havu dropped the curtain over this 
scene for a minute, — to remind you of one 
tiling, — and to inform you of another. 

What I have to inform you, comes, I own, 
a little out of its due course ; — for it should 
have been told a hundred and fifty pages 
ago, but that I foresaw then 'twould come 
in pat hereafter, and be of more advantage 
here than elsewhere. — Writers had need 
1'»ok before them, to Keep up the spirit and 
connexion of what they have in hand. 

When these two things are done, — the 



curtain shall be drawn up again, and my 
uncle Toby, my father and Dr. Slup, shall 
go on with their discourse, without any 
more interruption. 

First, then, the matter which I have to 
remind you of, is this : — That from the spe- 
cimens of singularity in my father's notions 
in the point of christian names, and that 
other previous point thereto, — you was led, 
I think, into an opinion, — (and I am sure 1 
said as much) that my father was a gentle- 
man altogether as odd and whimsical in 
fifty other opinions. In truth, there was 
not a stage in the life of man, from the very 
first act of his begetting, — down to the lean 
and slippered pantaloon in his second child* 
ishness, but he had some favorite notion , 
himself springing out of it, as sceptical, 
and as far out of the highway of thinking, 
as these two which have been explained. 

— Mr. Shandy, my father, Sir, would see 
nothing in the light in which others placed 
it ; — he placed things in his own light ; — he 
would weigh nothing in common scales : — 
no, he was too refined a researcher to lie 
open to so gross an imposition. — To come 
at the exact weight of things in the scien- 
tific steel-yard, the fulcrum, he would say, 
should be almost invisible, to avoid all fric- 
tion from the popular tenets ; — without this, 
the minuticB of philosophy, which would 
always turn tl e balance, will have no weight 
at all. Knowledge, like matter, he would 
affirm, was divisible in infinitum; — that 
the grains and scruples were as much a 
part of it, as the gravitation of the whole 
world. — In a word, he would say, error was 
error, — no matter where it fell — whether 
in a fraction, — or a pound, — 'twas alike 
fatal to Truth ; and she was kept down at 
the bottom of her well, as inevitably by a 
mistake in the dust of a butterfly's wing, 
— as in the disk of the sun, the moon, and 
all the stars of Heaven put together. 

He would often lament that it was for wan* 
of considering this properly, and of apply- 
ing it skilfully to civil matters, as well as 
to speculative truths, that so many things 
in this world were out of joint ; — that the 
political arch was giving way; — and that 
the very foundations of our excellent con- 
stitution in church and state, were so sapped 
as estimators had reported. 

You cry out, ho would say, we aro s 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



fi'i 



ruined, undone people. Why] he would 
ask, making- use of the sorites or syllogism 
of Zeno and Chrysippus, without knowing 
it belonged to them. — Why 1 why are we 
a ruined people 1 — Because we are corrupt- 
ed. — Whence is it, dear Sir, that we are 
corrupted 1 — Because we are needy ; — our 
poverty, and not our wills, consent : — and 
wherefore, he would add. are we needy? — 
Fron the neglect, he would answer, of our 
pence and our half-pence : — our bank notes, 
Sir, our guineas ; — nay, our shillings take 
sare of themselves. 

'Tis the same, he would say, throughout 
the whole circle of the sciences; — the 
great, the established points of them, are 
not to be broke in upon. — The laws of na- 
ture will defend themselves ; — but error — 
'he would add, looking earnestly at my 
mother) — error, Sir, creeps in through the 
minute holes and small crevices which hu- 
man nature leaves unguarded. 

This turn of thinking in my father, is 
what I had to remind you of: — the point 
you are to be informed of, and which I have 
reserved for this place, is as follows : — 

Amongst the many and excellent reasons 
with which my father had urged my mother 
to accept of Dr. Slop's assistance preferably 
to that of the old woman, — there was one 
of a very singular nature ; which, when he 
had done arguing the matter with her as a 
christian, and came to argue it over again 
with her as a philosopher, he had put his 
whole strength to, depending indeed upon 

it as his sheet-anchor. It failed him, 

though from no defect in the argument it- 
self: but that, do what he could, he was 
not able for his soul to make her compre- 
hend the drift of it. Cursed luck ! — said 

he to himself, one afternoon, as he walked 
out of the rooom, after he had been stating 
it for an hour and a half to her, to no 
manner of purpose ; — cursed luck ! said he, 
biting his lip as he shut the door, — for a 
man to be master of one of the finest chains 
of reasoning in nature, — and have a wife 
at the same time with such a head-piece, 
"hat he cannot hang up a single inference 
within side of it, to save his soul from de- 
struction ! 

This argument, though it was entirely 
lost upon my mother,— had more weight 
with him than all his other arguments 



joined together: — I will therefore endeavor 
to do it justice, — and set it forth with ai! 
the perspicuity I am master of. 

My father set out upon the strength of 
these two following axioms; 

First, That an ounce of a man's own wit 
was worth a ton of other people's ; and, 

Secondly, (which by the bye was the 
groundwork of the first axiom, — though it 
..omes last) That every man's wit must 
come from every man's own soul, — and no 
other body's. 

Now, as it was plain to my father, that 
all souls were by nature equal, — and that 
the great difference between the most acute 
and the most obtuse understanding, — was 
from no original sharpness or bluntness of 
one thinking substance above or below an- 
other, — but arose merely from the lucky or 
unlucky organization of the body, in that 
part where the soul principally took up her 
residence, — l.e had made it the object of 
his inquiry to find out the identical place. 

Now, from the best accounts he had been 
able to get of this matter, he was satisfied 
it could not be where Des Cartes had fixed 
it, upon the top of the pineal gland of the 
brain; which, as he philosophized, formed 
a cushion for her about the size of a marrow- 
pea; though to speak the truth, as so many 
nerves did terminate all in that one place, — 
'twas no bad conjecture : — and my father 
had certainly fallen with that great philoso* 
pher plump into the centre of the mistake, 
had it not been for my uncle Toby, who 
rescued him out of it by a story he told 
him of a Walloon officer at the battle of 
Landen, who had one part of his brains shot 
away by a musket ball, — and another part 
of it taken out after by a French surgeon ; 
and, after all, recovered, and did his duty 
very well without it. 

If death, said my father, reasoning with 
himself, is nothing but the separation of the 
soul from the body ; — and if it is true that 
people can walk about and do their business 
without brains, — then certes the soul docs) 
not inhabit there. — Q. E. D. 

As for that certain, very thin, subtle, ami 
very fragrant juice which Coglionis^ianu 
Borri, the great Milanese physician, affirms, 
in a letter to Bartholine, to have discovers! 
in the cellulce of the occipital parts of the 
cerebellum, and which he likewise affirms 



Oft 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



to be the principal seat of the reasonable [out which all that was done was of no rn,** 



bouI (for, yoa must know, in these latter 
and more enlightened ages, there are two 
souls in every man living-, — the one, accord- 
ing to the great Metheglingius, being called 
the Animus; the other the Anima ;) — as 
for the opinion, I say, of Eorri, — my father 
could never subscribe to it by any means ; 
the very idea of so noble, so refined, so im- 
material, and so exalted a being as the 
Anima, or even the Animus, taking up her 
residence and sitting dabbling like a tadpole 
all day long, both summer and winter, in a 
puddle, — or in a liquid of any kind, how 
thick or thin soever, he would say, shocked 
his imagination ; he would scarce give the 
doctrine a hearing. 

What therefore seemed the least liable 
to objections of any was, that the chief 
sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul, 
and to which place all intelligences were 
referred, and from whence all her mandates 
were issued, — was in, or near, the cere- 
bellum, — or rather somewhere about the 
medulla oblongata, wherein it was gene- 
rally agreed by Dutch anatomists, that all 
the minute nerves from all the organs of 
the seven senses concentrated, like streets 
and winding alleys, into a square. 

So far there was nothing singular in my 
father's opinion, — he had the best of phi- 
losophers, of all ages and climates, to go 

along with him. But here he took a road 

of his own, setting up another Shandean 
hypothesis upon these corner-stones they 
had laid for him — and which said hypothesis 
equally stood its ground ; whether the sub- 
tilty and fineness of the soul depended upon 
the temperature and clearness of the said 
liquor, or of the finer net- work and texture 
vi the cerebellum itself; which opinion he 
favored. 

He maintained, that next to the due care 
to be taken in the act of propagation of each 
individual, which required all the thought 
in the world, as it laid the foundation of 
this incomprehensible contexture, in which 
wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is 
usually meant by the name of good natural 
parts, do consist ; — that the next to this and 
his christian name, which were the two 
tr ; ginal and most efficacious causes of all : 
-that the third cause, or rather what logi- 
cians call the Causa sine qua non, and with- 



ner of significance, — was the preservatu/u 
of this delicate and fine-spun web, from trie 
havoc which was generally made in it by 
the violent compression and crush which 
the head was made to undergo, by the non- 
sensical method of bringing us into the 
world by that foremost. 

This requires explanation. 

My father, who dipped into all kinds ol 
books, upon looking into Lit.hopcedus Seno- 
nesis de Portu difficili*, published by Adri- 
anus Smelvgot, had found out, that the \a\ 
and pliable state of a child's head in partu- 
rition, the bones of the cranium having no 
sutures at that time, was such, — that by 
force of the woman's efforts, which, in 
strong labor-pains, was equal, upon an ave- 
rage, to the weight of 470 pounds avoir- 
dupois acting perpendicularly upon it;— it 
so happened, that in forty-nine instances 
out of fifty, the said head was compressed 
and moulded into the shape of an oblong 
conical piece of dough, such as a pastry- 
cook generally rolls up, in order to make a 
pye of. — Good God ! cried my father, what 
havoc and destruction must this make in 
the infinitely fine and tender texture of the 
cerebellum ! — Or if there is such a juice as 
Borri pretends, — is it not enough to make 
the clearest liquid in the world both fecu- 
lent and mothery ] 

But how great was his apprehension, 
when he farther understood, that this force 
acting upon the very vertex of the head, 
not only injured the brain itself, or cerebrum, 
— but that it necessarily squeezed and pro- 
pelled the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, 
which was the immediate seat of the un- 
derstanding! Angels and ministers of 

grace defend us ! cried my father, — can any 
soul withstand this shock 1 — No wonder the 
intellectual web is so rent and tattered as 
we see it ; and that so many of our best 



* The author is here twice mistaken ; for Lithopcpdus 
should be wrote thus: Lithopcedii Senoriensis Icon. 
The second mistake is, that this Lithopmdus is not an 
author, but a drawing of a petrified child. The ac- 
count of this, published by Athosius, 15P0, may oe 
seen at the end of Cordreus's works in Spachius. Mr. 
Tristram Shandy has been led into this error either 
from seeing Lithopa-dus's name of late in a catalogue 

of learned writers in Dr. , or by mistaking Lvao- 

pmdus for Trinccavcllius,— from the too great simili- 
tude of the names. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



09 



heads are no better than a puzzled skein of 
silk, — all perplexity, — all confusion within- 
side. 

But when my father read on, and was let 
into the secret, that when a child was 
turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for an 
operator to do, and was extracted by the 
feet ; — that instead of the cerebrum, being- 
propelled towards the cerebellum, — the 
cerebellum, on the contrary, was propelled 
simply towards the cerebrum, where it 
could do no manner of hurt : — By Heavens ! 
cried he, the world is in conspiracy to drive 
out what little wit God has given us, — and 
the professors of the obstetric art are listed 
into the same conspiracy. — What is it to 
me which end of my son comes foremost 
into the world, provided all goes right after, 
and his cerebellum escapes uncrushed ? 

It is the nature of an hypothesis, when 
once a man has conceived it, that it assimi- 
lates every thing to itself, as proper nour- 
ishment ; and from the first moment, of your 
begetting it, it generally grows the stronger 
by every thing you see, hear, read, or un- 
derstand. This is of great use. 



was so slight, that the whole organization 
of the cerebellum was preserved ; — nay, he 
did not believe, in natural births, that si 
much as a single thread of the net-work 
was broke or displaced, — so that the soul 
might just act as she liked. 

When my father had got so far, what 

a blaze of light did the accounts of the 
Caesarian section, and of the towering ge- 
niuses who had come safe into the world 
by it, cast upon this hypothesis ! Here you 
see, he would say, there was no injury done 
to the sensorium : — no pressure of the hend 
against the pelvis ; — no propulsion of the 
cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either by 
the os pubis on this side, or the as coxygis 
on that; and pray, what were the hap- 
py consequences 1 — Why, Sir, your Julius 
Caesar, who gave the operation a name ; — 
and your Hermes Trismegistus, who was 
born so before ever the operation hrd a 
name; — your Scipio Africanus; your Man- 
lius Torquatus; our Edward the Sixth, — 
who,- had he lived, would have done the 

same honor to the hypothesis These, 

and many more who figured high in the 



When my father was gone with this! annals of fame, — all came side-way, Sir 
about a month, there was scarce a phenom- ' into the world. 

enon of stupidity or of genius, which he The incision of the abdomen and uterus 
could not readily solve by it: — it accounted ran for six weeks together in my father's 
for the eldest son being the greatest block- head ; — he had read, and was satisfied, that 

head in the family. Poor devil, he would j wounds in the epigastrium, and those in 

say, he made way for the capacity of his the matrix, wera not mortal; — so that the 

younger brothers. It unriddled the ob-j belly of the mother might be opened ex- 

servations of drivellers and monstrous tremely well to give a passage to the child, 
neads, — showing, a priori, it could not be — He mentioned the thing one afternoon to 
otherwise, — unless **** I don't know what, my mother, — merely as a matter of fact ; 
It wonderfully explained and accounted for but seeing her turn as pale as ashes at the 
the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that ' very mention of it, as much as the operation 
sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating flattered his hopes, — he thought it as well 
intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not i to say no more of it, — contenting himself 
from the loose and commonplace solution j with admiring — what he thought was to no 
of a clear sky, and a more perpetual sun- purpose to propose. 

shine, &c. — which, for aught he knew, This was, my father, Mr. Shandy's hy- 
might as well rarefy and dilute the facul- ! pothesis ; concerning which I have only to 
ties of the soul into nothing, by one ex- add, that my brother Bobby did as great 
treme, — as they are condensed in colder i honor to it (whatever he did to the family) 
•limat.es by the other; — but he traced the I as any one of the great heroes we spoke of: 
affair up to its spring-head; — showed that, jfor happening not only to be christened, as 
fn warmer climates, nature had laid ail told you, but to be born too, when my 



lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the 
creation ; — their pleasures more ; — the ne- 
cessity of their pains less, insomuch that 



father was at Epsom, — being moreover my 
mother's first child, — coming into the world 
with his head foremost — and turning out 



the pressure and resistance upon the vertex , afterwards a lad of wonderful slow parts,— 



LIFE AND OPINIONS, &c. 



my ather spelt all these together into his 
opinion ; and as he had failed at one end, — 
he was determined to try the other. 

This was not to be expected from one of 
the sisterhood, who are not easily to be put 
out of their way ; — and was therefore one 
of my father's great reasons in favor of a 

man of science, whom he could better 

deal with. 

Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop was 
the fittest for my father's purpose: — for 
though his new-invented forceps was the 
armor he had proved, and what he main- 
tained to be the safest instrument of de- 
liverance, yet, it seems, he had scattered a 
word or two in his book, in favor of the 
very thing which ran in my father's fancy ; 
— though not with a view to the soul's good 
in extricating by the feet, as was my 
father's system, — but for reasons merely 
obstetrical. 

This will account for the coalition be- 
twixt my father and Dr. Slop, in the en- 
suing discourse, which went a little hard 
against my uncle Toby. In what man- 
ner a plain man, with nothing but common 
nense, could bear up against two such allies 



in science, — is hard to conceive. — You maj 
conjecture upon it, if you please ; — and 
whilst your imagination is in motion, you 
may encourage it to go on, and discover by 
what causes and effects in nature it could 
come to pass, that my uncle Toby got his 
modesty by the wound he received upon his 
groin. — You may raise a system to account 
for the loss of my nose by marriage-arti- 
cles, — and show the world how it could 
happen, that I should have the misfortune 
to be called Tristram, in opposition to my 
father's hypothesis, and the wish of the 
whole family, godfathers and godmothers 

not excepted. These, with fifty other 

points left unravelled, you may endeavor 
to solve, if you have time ; — but I tell you 
beforehand it will be in vain, for not the 
sage Alquise, the magician in Don Belianis 
of Greece, nor the no less famous Urganda 
the sorceress, his wife, (were they alive) 
could pretend to come within a league of 
the truth. 

The reader will be content to wait for a 
full explanation of these matters till the 
next year, — when a series of things wil] 
be laid open which he little expects. 



THE 

LIFE AND OPINIONS 

OF 

GENTLEMAN. 



CHAP. I. 

« I WISH, Dr. Slop," quoth my uncle 

Toby (repeating his wish for Dr. Slop a 
second time, and with a degree of more 
zeal and earnestness in his maimer of wish- 
ing than he had wished at first*) " I 

wish, Dr. Slop," quoth my uncle Toby, 
" you had seen what prodigious armies we 
had in Flanders." 

My uncle Toby's wish did Dr. Slop a 
disservice which his heart never intended 
any man; — Sir, it confounded him, — and 
thereby putting his ideas first into confu- 
sion, and then to flight, he could not rally 
diem again for the soul of him. 

In all disputes, — male or female, — whe- 
ther for honor, for profit, or for love, — it 
makes no difference in the case ; — nothing 
is more dangerous, Madam, than a wish 
coming sideways in this unexpected manner 
upon a man. The safest way in general to 
take off the force of his wish, is for the 
party wish'd at, instantly to get upon his 
legs, — and wish the wisher something in 
return, of pretty near the same value ; — so 
balancing the account upon the spot, you 
stand as you were: — nay, sometimes gain 
the advantage of the attack by it. 

This will be fully illustrated to the world 
in my chapter of wishes. — 

Dr Slop did not understand the nature 
of this defence — he was puzzled with it : — 
and it put an entire stop to the dispute for 
four minutes and a half; — five had been 
fatal to it ; — my father saw the danger : — 
the dispute was one of the most interesting 
disputes in the world, " whether the child 
"of his prayers and endeavors should be 



* Vide page 66. 



" born without a head, or with one." — He 
waited to the last moment, to allow Dr 
Slop, in whose behalf the wish was made, 
his right of returning it; but perceiving, 
I say, that he was confounded, and con- 
tinued looking with that perplexed va- 
cuity of eye which puzzled souls gene- 
rally stare with, — first in my uncle Toby's 
face, — then in his, — then up — then down, — 
then east, — east and by east, and so on, — 
coasting it along by the plinth of the wain- 
scot till he had got to the opposite point of 
the compass, — and that he had actually be- 
gun to count the brass nails upon the arm 
of his chair, my father thought there was 
no time to be lost with my uncle Toby ; bo 
took up the discourse as follows : — 



CHAP. II. 

— " What prodigious armies you had in 
Flanders !" 

Brother Toby, replied my father, taking 
his wig from off his head with his right 
hand, and with his left pulling out a striped 
India handkerchief from his right coat- 
pocket, in order to rub his head, as he 
urged the point with my uncle Toby. 

Now, in this I think my father was 

much to blame : and I will give you my 
reasons for it. 

Matters of no more seeming consequence 
in themselves than "whether my father 
"should have taken off his wig with bio 
" right hand or with his left," — have divideo- 
the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns 
of the monarJis who governed them, Ml 

totter upon their heads. But need I T^ii 

you, Sir, that the circumstances with winch 



VI LIFE AND 

every tiling- in this world is begirt, give 
every thing in this world its size and shape 
— and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this 
way or that, make the thing to be, what it 
is, — great, — little, — good, — bad, — indiffer- 
ent or not indifferent, just as the case 
happens ! 

As my father's India handkerchief was 
in his right coat-pocket, he should by no 
means have suffered his right hand to have 
pot engaged : on the contrary, instead of 
taking off his wig with it, as he did, he 
ought to have committed that entirely to 
the left : and then, when the natural exi 
gency my father was under of rubbing his 
nead, called out for his handkerchief, he 
would have had nothing in the world to 
have done, but to have put his right hand 
into his right coat-pocket and taken it out ; 
— which he might have done without any 
violence, or the least ungraceful twist in 
any one tendon or muscle of his whole body. 

In this case (unless, indeed, my father 
had been resolved to make a fool of himself 
by holding the wig stiff in his left hand,— 
or by making some nonsensical angle or 
other at his elbow-joint, or arm-pit) — his 
whole attitude had been easy, — natural, — 
unforced. Reynolds himself, as great and 
graceful as he paints, might have painted 
him as he sat. 

Now, as my father managed this matter, 
— consider what a devil of a figure my 
father made of himself. 

In the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, 
and in the Beginning of the reign of King 
George the First, — " Coat-pockets were cut 
" very low down in the skirt." — I need say 
no more ; — the father of mischief, had he 
been hammering at it a month, could not 
have contrived a worse fashion for one in 
my father's situation. 



CHAP. III. 



It was not an easy matter, in any king's 
»eign (unless you were as lean a subject as 
myself), to have forced your hand diago- 
nally, quite across your whole body, so as 
to gain the bottom of your opposite coat- 
itocket. In the year one thousand seven 



OPINIONS 

it was extremely difficult; so that when 
my uncle Toby discovered the transverse 
zig-zaggery of my father's approaches t 
wards it, it instantly brought into his mind 
those he had done duty in, before the gate 
of St. Nicholas ; — the idea of which drew off 
his attention so entirely from the subject in 
debate, that he had got his right hand to 
the bell to ring up Trim to go and fetch 
his map of Namur, and his compasses and 
sector along with it, to measure the return- 
ing angles of the traverses of that attack, — 
but particularly of that one where he re- 
ceived his wound upon his groin. 

My father knit his brows, and as he knit 
them, all the blood in his body seemed to 
rush up into his face — my uncle Toby dis- 
mounted immediately. 

— I did not apprehend your uncle Toby 
was on horseback. 



CHAP IV. 



A man's body and his mind, with the ut- 
most reverence to both I speak it, are ex- 
actly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining; — 
rumple the one, — you rumple the other. 
There is one certain exception however in 
this case, and that is, when you are so for- 
tunate a fellow as to have had your jerkin 
made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to 
it of a sarcenet, or thin Persian. 

Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Babylonius, 
Dionysius, Heracleotes, Antipater, Panae- 
tius, and Possidonius, amongst the Greeks; 
— Cato, and Varro, and Seneca, amongst 
the Romans ; — Pantenus, and Clemens Al- 
exandrinus, and Montaigne, amongst the 
Christians; and a score and a half of good, 
honest, unthinking, Shandean people as 
ever lived, whose names I cannot recollect, 
— all pretended that their jerkins were 
made after this fashion ; — you might have 
rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and 
creased, and fretted, and fridged the outside 
of them all to pieces ; — in short, you might 
have play'd the very devil with them, and 
at the same time, not one of the insides of 
them would have been one button the 
worse, for all you had done to them. 

I believe in my conscience that mine is 
made up somewhat after this sort'- ^br 



never poor jerkin has been tickled off at 
sucn a rate as it has been these last nine 
montns together, — and yet I declare the 
lining to it, — as far as I am a judge of the 
matter, — is not a three-penny piece the 
worse ;— pell-mell, helter-skelter, ding-dong, 
cut and thrust, hack stroke and fore stroke, 
side way and long 1 way, have they been 
trimming it for me : — had there been the 
.east gumminess in my lining, by Heaven ! 
it had all of it, long ago, been frayed and 
fretted to a thread. 

You Messrs. the Monthly Review- 



ers! how could you cut and slash my 

jerkin as you did 1 — how did you know but 
you would cut my lining too? 

Heartily and from my soul, to the pro- 
tection of that Being who will injure none 
of us, do I recommend you and your affairs, 
— so God bless you ; — only next month, if 
any one of you should gnash his teeth, and 
storm and rage at me, as some of you did 
last May (in which I remember the weather 
was very hot) — don't be exasperated if I 
pass it by again with good temper, — being 
determined as long as I live or write (which 
in my case means the same thing,) never 
to give the honest gentleman a worse word 
or a worse wish than my uncle Toly gave 
the fly which buzz'd about his nose all din- 
ner-time : " Go, — go, poor devil," quoth 

he ; — " get thee gone : — why should I hurt 
" thee 1 — This world is surely wide enough 
" to hold both thee and me." 



CHAP. V. 

Any man, Madam, reasoning upwards, 
and observing the prodigious effusion of 
blood in my father's countenance; — by 
means of which (as all the blood in his body 
seomed to rush into his face, as I told you,) 
he must have reddened, pictorically and 
scientifically speaking, six whole tints and 
a half, if not a full octave above his natural 
color; — any man, Madam, but my uncle 
Toby, who had observed this, — together 
with the violent knitting of my father's 
brows, and the extravagant contortion of 
*ais body during the whole affair, — would 
nave concluded my father in a rage; and 
vaking that for granted, — had he been a 
K 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 73 

lover of such kind of concord as arises from 
two such instruments being put into exact, 
tune, — he would instantly have screw'd up 
his to the same pitch ; — and then the devil 
and all had broke loose — the whole piece, 
Madam, must have been played off like the 
sixth of Avison Scarlatti —c.onfiiria, — like 
mad.-: — Grant me patience ! — What has con 
furia, — con strepito, — or any other hurly- 
burly whatever, to do w ith harmony l 

Any man, I say. Madam, but my uncle 
Toby, the benignity of whose heart inter 
preted every motion of the body in the 
kindest sense the motion would admit of, 
would have concluded my father angry, 
and blamed him too. My uncle Toby 
blamed nothing but the' tailor who cut the 
pocket-hole ; — so sitting still till my father 
had got his handkerchief out of it, and 
looking all the time up in his face with in- 
expressible good-will, — my father at length 
went on as follows — 



CHAP. VI. 



" What prodigious armies you had 

in Flanders !" 

Brother Toby, quoth my father, I do 

believe thee to be as honest a man, and with 
as good and as upright a heart as ever God 
created; — nor is it thy fault, if all the chil 
dren which have been, may, can, shall, will, 
or ought to be begotten, come with their 
heads foremost into the world : — but believe 
me, dear Toby, the accidents which un- 
avoidably waylay them, not only in the ar- 
ticle of our begetting 'em, — though these, in 
my opinion, are well worth considering, — 
but the dangers and difficulties our children 
are beset with, after they are got forth into 
the world, are enow ; — little need is there 
to expose them to unnecessary ones in their 

passage to it. Are these dangers, quoth 

my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon my 
father's knee, and looking up seriously ir 
his face for an answer, — are these dangers 
greater now-a-days, brother, than in times 

past? Brother Toby, answered my father. 

if a child was but fairly begot, and born 
alive, and healthy, and the mother did well 
after it, — our forefathers never looKea far- 
ther. — My uncle Toby instant' y withdrew 



74 

his hand from my father's knee, reclined his 
body gently back in his chair, raised his 
head till ne could just see the cornice of the 
room, and then directing the buccinatory 
muscles along his cheeks, and the obicular 
muscles around his lips to do their duty,- 
he whistled Lillibullero. 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

As Obadiah had a wife and three chii 
dren, — the turpitude of fornication, and the 
many other political ill consequences of this 
jingling, never once entered his bram , — ne 
had however his objection, which came 
home to himself, and weighed with him, as 
it has oftentimes done with the greatest 

patriots. «" The poor fellow, Sir, was not 

"able to hear himself whistle." 



CHAP. VII. 

Whilst my uncle Toby was whistling 
Lillibullero to my father, — Dr. Slop was 
stamping, and cursing and damning at Oba- 
diah at a most dreadful rate. It would 

have done your heart good, and cured you, 
Sir, for ever, of the vile sin of swearing, to 
have heard him. I am determined, therefore, 
to relate the whole affair to you. 

When Dr. Slop's maid delivered the 
green baize bag with her master's instru- 
ments in it, to Obadiah, she very sensibly 
exhorted him to put his head and one arm 
through the strings, and ride with it slung 
across his body. So undoing the bow-knot, 
to lengthen the strings for him, without any 
more ado, she helped him on with it. How- 
ever, as this, in some measure, unguarded 
the mouth of the bag ; lest any thing should 
bolt out in galloping back, at the speed Oba- 
diah threatened, they concluded to take it 
off again : and in the great care and caution 
of their hearts, they had taken the two 
strings and tied them close (pursing up the 
mouth of the bag first) with half a dozen 
hard knots, each of which Obadiah, to make 
all safe, had twitched and drawn together 
with all the strength of his body. 

This answered all that Obadiah and the 
maid intended ; but was no remedy against 
some evils which neither he or she foresaw. 
The instruments, it seems, as tight as the 
bag was tied above, had so much room to 
play in it, towards the bottom (the shape of 
the bag being conical) that Obadiah could 
not make a trot of it, but with such a terri- 
ble jingle, what with the tire-tete, forceps, 
and squirt, as would have been enough, 
had Hymen been taking a jaunt that way, 
to have frightened him out of the country ; 
but wnen Obadian accelerated his motion, 
arid from a plain trot essayed to prick his 
coach-horse into a full gallop, — by Heaven ! 
Sir, the jingle was incredible. 



CHAP. VIII. 

As Obadiah loved wind-rnusic preferably 
to all the instrumental music he carried 
with him, — he very considerately set his 
imagination to work, to contrive and to in- 
vent by what means he should put himself 
in a condition of enjoying it. 

In all distresses (except musical) where 
small cords are wanted, nothing is so apt to 

enter a man's head as his hat-band : the 

philosophy of this is so near the surface, — I 
scorn to enter into it. 

As Obadiah's was a mixed case: 

mark, Sirs, — I say, a mixed case ; for it was 
obstetrical, — scrip-tical, squirtical, papisti 
cal — and as far as the coach-horse was con- 
cerned in it, — cabalistical, — and only partly 
musical: — Obadiah made no scruple of 
availing himself of the first expedient which 
offered ; so taking hold of the bag and in- 
struments, and griping them hard together 
with one hand, and with the finger and 
thumb of the other, putting the end of the 
hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping 
his hand down to the middle of it, — he tied 
and cross-tied them all fast together from 
one end to the other (as you would cord a 
trunk) with such a multiplicity of round- 
abouts and intricate cross-turns, with a hard 
knot at every intersection or point where 
the strings met, — that Dr. Slop must have 
had three-fifths of Job's patience at least to 
have unloosed them. — I think, in my con- 
science, that had Nature been in one of her 
nimble moods, and in humor for such a con- 
test, — and she and Dr. Slop both fairly 
started together, — there is no man living 
who had seen the bag with all that ONadiah 
had done to it,— -and known likewise the 
great speed the Goddess can make when 
she thinks proper, who would have had tlio 



OF TRLJTRAM SHANDY. 



75 



'oast doubt remaining in his mind — which 
i»f the two would have carried off the prize. 
My mother, Madam, had been delivered 
sooner than the green bag infallibly — at 

least by twenty knots. Sport of small 

accidents, Tristram Shandy! that thou art, 
and ever will be ! had that trial been made 
for thee, and it was fifty to one but it had, 
— thy affairs had not been so depress'd (at 
least by the depression of thy nose) as they 
have been ; nor had the fortunes of thy 
house and the occasions of making them 
which have so often presented themselves 
in the course of thy life, to thee, been so 
often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so irrevo- 
cably abandoned — as thou hast been forced 
to leave them ; — but 'tis over, — all but the 
account of 'em, which cannot be given to 
the curious till I am got out into the world 



CHAP. IX. 



Great wits jump : — for the moment Dr. 
Slop cast his eyes upon his bag (which he 
had not done till the dispute with my uncle 
Toby about midwifery put him in mind of 
it) the very same thought occurred. — 'Tis 
God's mercy, quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. 
Shandy has had so bad a lime of it, else she 
might have been brought to bed seven times 
told, before one half of these knots could 
have been got untied. — But here you must 
distinguish : — the thought floated only in 
Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to 
it, as a simple proposition ; millions of 
which, as your Worship knows, are every 
day swimming quietly in the middle of the 
thin juice of a man's understanding, with- 
out being carried backwards or forwards, 
till some little gusts of passion or interest 
drive them to one side. 

A sudden trampling in the room above, 
near my mother's bed, did the proposition 
the very service I am speaking of. By all 
that's unfortunate, quoth Dr. Slop, unless I 
make haste, the thing will actually befall 
me as it is. 



CHAP. X. 



In the case of knots ; by which, in the first 
piace. I would not be understood to mean 



slip-knots, — because in the course of my 
life and opinions, — my opinions concerning 
them will come in more properly when i 
mention the catastrophe of my great-uncle 
Mr. Hammond Shandy, — a little man, — but 
of high fancy ; — he rushed into the Duke 
of Monmouth's affair: — nor, secondly, in 
this place, do I mean that particular species 
of knots called bow-knots; — there is so 
little address, or skill, or patience required 
in the unloosing them, that they are below 
my giving any opinion at all about them. 
— But by the knots I am speaking of, may 
it please your Reverences to believe, that 
I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard 
knots, made bona fide, as Obadiah made his: 
— in which there is no quibbling provision 
made by the duplication and return of the 
two ends of the strings through the annulus 
or noose made by the second implication of 
them, — to get them slipp'd and undone by. 
— I hope you apprehend me. 

In the case of these knots then, and of 
the several obstructions, which, may it 
please your Reverences, such knots cast in 
our way in getting through life, — every 
hasty man can whip out his pen-knife and 
cut through them. — 'Tis wrong. Believe 
me, Sirs, the most virtuous way, and which 
both reason and conscience dictate, — is to 
take our teeth or our fingers to them. — Dr. 
Slop had lost his teeth — his favorite in- 
strument, by extracting in a wrong direc- 
tion, or by some misapplication of it, unfor- 
tunately slipping, he had formerly, in a 
hard labor, knock'd out three of the best 

of them with the handle of it: he tried 

his fingers ; — alas, the nails of his fingers 

and thumbs were cut close. The deuce 

take it ! I can make nothing of it either 

way, cried Dr. Slop. The trampling 

over-head near my mother's bed-side in- 
creased. — Pox take the fellow ! I shall never 
get the knots untied as long as I live. — My 

mother gave a groan. Lend me your 

pen-knife — I must e'en cut the knots at 
last. — Pugh ! — psha ! — Lord ! I have cut my 
thumb quite across to the very bone. — Curse 
the fellow — if there was not another man- 
midwife within fifty miles — I am undone 
for this bout — I wish the scoundrel hang'd 
— I wish he was shot — I wish all the devila 
in hell had him for a blockhead ! 

My father had a great respect for Oba 



~6 LIFE AND 

diah, and could not bear to hear him dispos- 
ed of in such a manner : — he had moreover 
some little, respect for himself, — and could 
as ill bear with the indignity offered to 
himself in it. 

Had Dr. Slop cut any part about him but 
his thumb, — my father had pass'd it by — 
his prudence had triumphed : — as it was, he 
was determined to have his revenge. 

Small curses, Dr. Slop, upon great occa- 
sions, quoth my father (condoling with him 
first upon the accident) are but so much 
waste of our strength and soul's health to 

no manner of purpose. 1 own it, replied 

Dr. Slop.- They are like sparrow-shot, 

quoth my uncle Toby (suspending his 

whistling) fired against a bastion. They 

serve, continued my father, to stir the hu- 
mors — but carry off none of their acri- 
mony ; — for my own part, I seldom swear 
or curse at all — I hold it bad ; — but if I fall 
into it by surprise, I generally retain so 
much presence of mind (right, quoth my 
uncle Toby,) as to make it answer my pur- 
pose ; — that is, I swear on till I find myself 
easy. A wise and a just man however 
would always endeavor to proportion the 
vent given to these humors, not only to the 
degree of them stirring within himself, — 
but to the size and ill intent of the offence 
upon which they are to fall — "Injuries 
come only from the heart," — quoth my un- 
cle Toby. For this reason, continued 

my father, with the most Cervantic gravity, 
I have the greatest veneration in the world 
for that gentleman, who, in distrust of his 



OPINIONS 

own discretion in this point, sat down and 
composed (that is, at his leisure) fit forms 
of swearing suitable to all cases, from the 
lowest to the highest provocations which 
could possibly happen to him ; — which 
forms being well considered by him, and 
such moreover as he could stand to, he kepi 
them ever by him on the chimney-piece, 

within his reach, ready for use. 1 never 

apprehended, replied Dr. Slop, that such a 
thing was ever thought of, — much less ex- 
ecuted. — I beg your pardon, answered my 
father; I was reading, though not using, 
one of them to my brother Toby, this morn- 
ing, whilst he pour'd out the tea : — 'tis here 
upon the shelf over my head : but if I re- 
member right, 'tis too violent for a cut of 

the thumb. Not at all, quoth Dr. Slop — 

the devil take the fellow. Then, an- 
swered my father, 'tis much at your ser- 
vice, Dr. Slop, — on condition you will read 
it aloud. — So rising up and reaching down 
a form of excommunication of the church 
of Rome, a copy of which my father (who 
was curious in his collections) had procured 
out of the leger-book of the church of 
Rochester, writ by Ernulphus the bishop, — 
with a most affected seriousness of look and 
voice, which might have cajoled Ernulphus 
himself, — he put it into Dr. Slop's hands. 

Dr. Slop wrapt his thumb up in the 

corner of his handkerchief, and with a wry 
face, though without any suspicion, read 
aloud, as follows, — my uncle Toby whistling 
Lillibullero as loud as he could all the time. 



TEXTUS DE ECCLESIA ROFFENSI, PER 

ERNULFUM EPISCOPUM. 

CAP. XL 

EXCOMMUNICATO).* 
Ex auctoritate Dei Omnipotentis, Patris, 
et Filij, et Spiritus Sancti, et sanctorum 
canonum, sanctaEque et intemeratee Virginis 
Dei genetricis Marise, — 



CHAP. XL 



" By the authority of God Almighty, the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the 
holy canons, and of the undefiled Virgin 
Mary, mother and patroness of our Sa- 



* As tne genuineness of the consultation of the Sorbonne upon the question of Baptism, was doubted by 
korae aw denied by others,— 'twas thought proper to print the original of this excommunication : for the 
e*»o> ot which Mr. Snandy returns thanks to, the chapter-clerk of the dean and chapter of Rochester. 



Atque amniuno crilestium virtutum, 

angelorum, archangelorum, thronorum, do- 
minationum, protestatuum, cherubin ac 
Beraphin, & sanctorum patriarcharum, pro- 
phetarum, & omnium apostolorum & evan- 
gelistarum, and sanctorum innocentum, qui 
in conspectu Agni Sancti digni inventi 
sunt canticum cantare novum, et sanctorum 
martyrum & sanctorum confessorum, et 
sanctarum virginum, atque omnium simul 
sanctorum et electorum Dei, — Excommuni- 
vel os s 

camus, et anathematizamus hunc furem, 
vel os s 

vel hunc malefactorem, N.N. et a liminibus 
sanctae Dei ecclesiae sequestramus, et astern is 

vel i n 

euppliciis excruciandus, mancipetur, cum 
Dathan et Abiram, et cum his qui dixerunt 
Domino Deo, Recede a nobis, scientiam 
viarum tuarum nolumus : et sicut aqua ignis 

vel eorum 
sxtinguitur, sic extinguatur, lucerna ejus in 

n 
»ecula seculorum nisi respuerit, et ad satis- 

n 
factionem venerit. Amen. 
os 
Maledicant ilium Deus Pater qui hominem 
os 
creavit. Maledicat ilium Dei Filius qui pro 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 77 

vior." — I think there is no necessity, quoth 
Dr. Slop, dropping the paper down to his 
knee, and addressing himself to my father, 
— as you have read it over, Sir, so lately, tc 
read now aloud ; — and as Captain Shandy 
seems to have no great inclination to hear 

it, — I may as well read it to myself. 

That's contrary to treaty, replied my father 
— Besides, there is something so whimsical, 
especially in the latter part of it, I should 
grieve to lose the pleasure of a second read- 
ing. — Dr. Slop did not altogether like it; 
but my uncle Toby offering at that instant 
to give over whistling, and read it himself 
to them, — Dr. Slop thought he might as 
well read it, under the cover of my uncle 
Toby's wdiistling — as suffer my uncle Toby 
to read it alone : — so raising up the paper 
to his face, and holding it quite parallel to 
it, in order to hide his chagrin, — he read it 
.aloud, as follows — my uncle Toby whistling 
Lillibullero, though not quite so loud as 
before. 

" By the authority of God Almighty, thfl 
" Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the 
"undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and pa- 
" troness of our Savior, and of all the ce- 
" lestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, 
"dominions, powers, cherubims and sera- 
" phims, and of all the holy patriarchs, pro- 
" phets, and of all the apostles and evan- 
" gelists, and of the holy innocents, who in 
"the sight of the Holy Lamb, are found 
" worthy to sing the new song of the holy 
" martyrs and holy confessors, and of the 
"holy virgins, and of all the saints, to- 
" gether with the holy and elect of God, — 
" May he" (Obadiah) " be damn'd" (for ty- 
ing these knots) — "We excommunicate 
"and anathematize him; and from the 
"thresholds of the holy church of God Al- 
" mighty we sequester him, that he may be 
"tormented, disposed, and delivered over 
" with Dathan and Abiram, and with those 
"who say unto the Lord God, Depart frDrn 
" us, we desire none of thy ways. And as 
"fire is quenched with water, so let. the 
"light of him be put out for evermore, un- 
"less it shall repent him" (Obadiah, of the 
knots which he has tied) " and make satis- 
" faction !" (for them) " Amen." 

"May the Father w r ho created man, curst, 
" him. — May the Son wno suffered for us, 

" curse him ! May the Holv Ghost, wno 

7* 



78 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



hornine passus est. Maledicat ilium Spiritus 
Sanctus qui in baptismo eftusus est. Male- 

os 
dica* ilium sancta crux, quam Christus pro 
nostia salute hostem triumphans ascendit. 

OS 

Maledicat ilium sancta Dei genetrix et 

OS 

perpetua Virgo Maria. Maledicat ilium 
sanctus Michael, animarum susceptor sa- 

os 
crarum. Maledicant ilium omnes angeli et 
archangeli, principatus et potestates, omnes- 
que militia coelestes. 



Maledicat ilium patriarcharum et prophe- 

os 
tarum laudabilis numerus. Maledicant ilium 
sanctus Johannes Precursor et Baptista 
Christi, et sanctus Petrus, et sanctus Paulus, 
atque sanctus Andreas, omnesque Christi 
apostoli, simul et cseteri discipuli quatuor 
quoque evangelists, qui sua prsedicatione 
mundum universum converterunt. Maledi- 

os 
cat ilium cuneus martyrum et confessorum 
minficus, qui Deo bonis operibus placitus 
mventus est. 

OS 

Maledicant ilium sacrarum virginum 
fihori, quae mundi vana causa honoris Christi 

OS 

tospuenda contempserunt. Maledicant ilium 
umnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque in 
tinem seculi Deo dilecti inveniuntur. 

OS 

Maledicant ilium coeli et terra, et omnia 
sancta in eis manentia. 

i n n 

Maledictus sit ubicunque, fuerit, sive in 
domo, sive in agro, sive in via, sive in semita, 
sue in silva, sive in aqua, sive in ecclesia. 
i n 
Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo, — 



mandumndo, bibendo, ( suriendo, sitiendo, 
ejunando, dormitando, dormiendo, vigilando, 
ao'luilanau. stando. sedendo, jacendo, oper- 



" was given to us in baptism, curse him ! 

(Obadiah) "May the holy cross which 

" Christ, for our salvation, triumphing over 
" his enemies, ascended, curse him ! 



" May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, 
" mother of God, curse him ! — May St 
"Michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse 

" him ! May all the angels and arch 

" angels, principalities and powers, and all 
" the heavenly armies, curse him !" [Our 
armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my 

uncle Toby, — but nothing to this. For 

my own part, I could not have a heart to 
curse my dog so.] 

"May the praiseworthy multitude of 
" patriarchs and prophets curse him I 

"May St. John, the Prsecursoi, *nd St. 
" John the Baptist, and St. Petei, and St. 
"Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other 
" Christ's apostles, together carea him ! 
" And may the rest of his discipie? and 
" four evangelists, who, by thei/ preaching 
"converted the universal world, and may the 
"holy and wonderful company of martyid 
"and confessors, who by their ho'y works 
" are found pleasing to God Almighty, curs« 
"him!" (Obadiah.) 

"May the holy choir of the holy virgins, 
" who for the honor of Christ have despiseu 
" the things of the world, damn him ! — May 
" all the saints who, from the beginning oJ 
" the world to everlasting ages, are found 
" to be beloved of God, damn him ! — May 
" the heavens and earth, and all the holy 
"things remaining therein, damn him," 
(Obadiah) " or her !" (or whoever eleo had 
a hand in tying these knots.) 

"May he" (Obadiah) "be damn'd wherever 
"he be, — whether in the house* or the 
"stables, the garden, or the field, or the 
" highway, or in the path, or in the wood, 
" or in the water, or in the church ! — —May 
" he be cursed, in living, in dying !" [Here 
my uncle Toby, taking the advantage of a 
minim in the second bar of his tune, kept 
whistling one continued note to the end of 
the sentence, — Dr. Slop, with his division 
of curses, moving under him, like a running 
bass, all the way.] "May he be cursed in 
" eating and drinking, in being \ungry, in 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



79 



ando, quicscendo, mingendo, cacando, flebo- 
tomando. 



1 n 

Maledictus sit m totis viribus corporis, 
i n 

Maledictus sit intus ex exterius. 

in in 

Maledictus sit in capillis ; maledictus sit 
i n 
in cerebro. Maledictus sit in vertice, in 
temporibus, in fronte, in auriculis, in super- 
ciiiis, in oculis, in genis, in maxillis, in 
naribus, in dentibus, mordacibus, in labris 
sive molibus, in labiis, in guttere, in humeris, 
in carpis, in bracbiis, in manubus, in digitis, 
in pectore, in corde, et in omnibus interiori- 
bus stomacho tenus, in renibus, in inguine, 
in temore, in genitalibus, in coxis, in genu- 
bus, in cruribus. in pedidus, et in unguibus. 



Maledictus sit in totis compagibus mem- 
brorum, a vertice capitis, usque ad plantam 
pedis. — Non sit in eo sanitas. 
os 

Maledicat ilium Christus Film 5 ? Dei vivi 
toto suae majestatis imperio 



"being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in 
" slumbering, in waking, in walking, in 
"standing, in sitting, in lying, in working, 
" in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in 
" blood-letting ! 

"May he" (Obadiah) "be cursed in all 
"the faculties of his body ! 

"May he be cursed inwardly and out- 

" wardly ! May he be cursed in the hair 

" of his head ! May he be cursed in his 

"brains, and in his vertex," [That is a sad 
curse, quoth my father] " in his temples in 
" his forehead, in his ears, in his eyebrows, 
"in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his 
" nostrils, in his fore-teeth and grinders, in 
" his lips, in his throat, in his shoulders, in 
"his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in 
" his fingers ! 

" May he be damn'd in his mouth, in his 
" breast, in his heart and purtenance, down 
" to the very stomach ! 

"May he be cursed in his reins, and in 
" his groin," [God in Heaven forbid ! quoth 
"my uncle Toby] "in his thighs, in his 
"genitals" [My father shook his head] "and 
" in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, and 
" feet, and toe-nails ! 

"May he be cursed in all the joints and 
" articulations of his members, from the top 
" of his head to the sole of his foot ! May 
" there be no soundness in him !" 

" May the Son of the living God, with 

" all the glory of his Majesty, " [Here 

my uncle Toby throwing back his head, 
gave a monstrous, long, loud Whew — w — 

w ; something betwixt the interjec- 

tional whistle of Heyday! and the word 
itself. 

By the golden beard of Jupiter,— 

and of Juno (if her majesty wore one), and 
by the beards of the rest of your heathen 
Worships, which, by the bye, was no small 
number, since, what with the beards of your 
celestial gods, and gods aerial and aquatic, 
— to say nothing of the beards of town-gods 
and country-gods, or of the celestial god- 
desses your wives, or of the infernal god- 
desses your whores and concubines (that 

is in case they wore them) all which 

beards, as Varro tells me, upon his word 
and honor, when mustered up together, 
made no less than thirty thousand effective 
beards upon the Pagan establishment - 



HO 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



et insurgat adversus ilium cesium 

cum omnibus virtutibus quae in eo moventur 
ad damnandum eum nisi poenituerit et ad 
satisfactionem venerit. Amen. Fiat, fiat. 
Amen. 



CHAP. XII. 

Now don't let us give ourselves a parcel 
of airs, and pretend that the oaths we 
make free with in this land of liberty of 
ours are our own ; and because we have 
the spirit to swear them, — imagine that we 
have had the wit to invent them too. 

I'll undertake this moment to prove it to 
any man in the world, except to a connois- 
seur ; though I declare I object only to 

a connoisseur in swearing, — as I would do 
to a connoisseur in painting, &c. &c. the 
whole set of 'em are so hung round and 
befetisWd with the bobs and trinkets of criti- 
cism, — or, to drop my metaphor, which by 
the bye is a pity, — for I have fetch'd it as 
far as from the coast of Guinea, — their heads, 
Si-, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, 
ind have that eternal propensity to apply 
'Qom unojj all occasions, that a work ofi 



every beard of which claimed the rights 
and privileges of being stroken and sworn 
by : — by all these beards together then, — 
I vow and protest that of the two bad cas- 
socks I am worth in the world, I would 
have given the better of them, as freely as 
ever Cid Hamet offered his, — to have stood 
by and heard my uncle Toby's accompani- 
ment.] 

" curse him !" — continued Dr. Slop, 

— " and may Heaven, with all the powers 
" which move therein, rise up against him, 
"curse and damn him," (Obadiah) "unless 
" he repent and make satisfaction ! Amen. 
" So be it, — so be it. — Amen." 

I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, my heart 
would not let me curse the devil himself 

with so much bitterness. He is the 

father of curses, replied Dr. Slop. So am 

not I, replied my uncle. But he is cursed 

and damn'd already to all eternity, replied 
Dr. Slop. 

I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle Toby. 

Dr. Slop drew up his mouth, and was 
just beginning to return my uncle Toby 
the compliment of his Whu — u — u, or in- 
terjectional whistle, — when the door hastily 
opening in the next chapter but one, — put 
an end to the affair. 



genius had better go to the devil at once, 
than stand to be prick'd and tortur'd to death 
by 'em. 

— And how did Garrick speak the solilo- 
quy last night ] — Oh, against all rule, my 
Lord, — most ungrammatically ! betwixt the 
substantive and the adjective, which should 
agree together in number, case, and gender, 
he made a breach thus, — stopping, as if the 
point wanted settling; — and betwixt the 
nominative case, which your Lordship knows 
should govern the verb, he suspended his 
voice in the epilogue a dozen times* three 
seconds and three fifths by a stop-watch, my 
Lord, each time. Admirable gramma- 
rian! — But in suspending his voice, — w T as 
the sense suspended likewise] Did no expres- 
sion of attitude or countenance fill up the 
chasm 1 — Was the eye silent? — Did you 
narrowly look? 1 look'd only at. the stop- 
watch, mv Lord. Excellent observer'. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

And what of this new book the whole 
world makes such a rout about? — Oh! 'tisout 
of all plumb, my Lord, — quite an irregular 
thing- ! — not one of the angles at the four 

corners was a right angle. 1 had my 

rule and compasses. &c. my Lord, in my 
pocket. Excellent critic ! 

And for the epic poem your Lordship 

bid me look at, — upon taking- the length 
breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying 
them at home upon an exact scale of 

Bossu's, 'tis out, my Lord, in every one 

of its dimensions. Admirable connois- 



9 



And did you step in, to tai?e a look 

at the grand picture in your way back ] — 
'Tis a melancholy daub, my Lord, not one 
principle of the pyramid in any one group! 
— and what a price ! — for there is nothing 
of the coloring of Titian — the expression 
of Rubens — the grace of Raphael — the pu- 
rity of Dominichino — the corregiescity of 
Corregio — the learning of Poussin — the airs 
of Guido — the taste of the Carrachis — or the 
grand contour of Angelo. Grant me pa- 
tience, just Heaven ! — Of all the cants 
which are canted in this canting world, — 
though the cant of hypocrites may be the 
worst, — the cant of criticism is the most tor- 
menting! 

I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have 
not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the 
hand of that man whose generous heart will 
give up the reins of his imagination into his 
author's hands, — be pleased he knows not 
why, and cares not wherefore. 

Great Apollo ! — if thou art in a giving 
humor, — give me, — I ask no more, but one 
stroke of native humor, with a single spark 
of thy own fire along with it, — and send 
Mercury, with the rules and compasses, 
if he can be spared, with my compliments 
to, — no matter. 

Now to any one else I wiL undertake to 
prove, that all the oaths and imprecations 
which we have been puffing off upon the 
world for these two hundred and fifty years 
last past as originals, — except St. Paul's 
thumb, — God's flesh, and God's fish, which 
were oaths monarchical, and, considering 
who made them, not much amiss; and as 
king's oaths, 'tis not much matter whether 
they were fish or flesh ; — else, I sav, there 
L 



is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst 
them, which has not been copied over and 
over again out of Ernulphus a thousand 
times; but, like all other copies, how in- 
finitely short of the force and spirit of the 
original ! — It is thought to be no bad oath, 
— and by itself passes very well, — "G— <i 

damn you." Set it beside Ernulphus's 

— "God Almighty the Father damn you, 
" — God the Son damn you, — God the Holy 
" Ghost damn you," — you see 'tis nothing. 
There is an orientality in his we can- 
not rise up to : besides, he is more copious 
in his invention, — possess'd more of the 
excellencies of a swearer, — had such a 
thorough knowledge of the human frame, 
its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings 
of the joints, and articulations, — that when 
Ernulphus cursed, — no part escaped him. 

-'Tis true, there is something of a 

hardness in his manner, — and, as in Michael 
Angelo, a want of grace ; — but then there 
is such a greatness of gusto ! 

My father, who generally look'd upon 
every thing in a light very different from 
all mankind, would, after all, never allow 
this to be an original. — He considered rather 
Ernulphus's anathema as an institute of 
swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon 
the decline of swearing in some milder 
pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the suc- 
ceeding pope, had with great learning ana 
diligence collected together all the laws of 
it; — for the same reason that Justiniau, in 
the decline of the empire, had ordered his 
chancellor Tribonias to collect the Roman 
or civil laws together into one code or 
digest — lest, through the rust of time, and 
the fatality of all things committed to oral 
tradition, — they should be lost to the world 
for ever. 

For this reason my father would often 
times affirm, there was not an oath from 
the great and tremendous oath of William 
the conqueror ("By the splendor of God") 
down to the lowest oath of a scavenger 
(" Damn your eyes") which was not to be 

found in Ernulphus. In short, he wouid* 

add — I defy a man to swear out of it. 

The hypothesis is, like most of my father's, 
singular and ingenious too; — nor have 1 
any objection to it, but that it overturns mv 
own. 



82 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



CHAP. XIII. 



Bless my soul ! — my poor mistress 

is ready to faint — and her pains are gone — 
and the drops are done — and the bottle of 
julap is broke — and the nurse has cut her 
arm — (and I my thumb, cried Dr. Slop;) 
and the child is where it was, continued 
Susannah, — and the midwife has fallen 
backwards upon the edge of the fender, and 

bruised her hip as black as your hat. I'll 

look at it, quoth Dr. Slop. There is no 

need of that, replied Susannah, — you had 
better look at my mistress — but the mid- 
wife would gladly first give you an account 
how things are ; so desires you would go 
up stairs and speak to her this moment. 

Human nature is the same in all profes- 
sions. 

The midwife had just before been put 
over Dr. Slop's head, he had no* di- 
gested it. — No, replied Dr. Slop, 'twould be 
fi)ll»as proper, if the midwife came down to 

me, 1 like subordination, quoth my uncle 

Toby, — and but for it, after the reduction of 
Lisle, I know not what might have become 
of the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for 

bread, in the year Ten. Nor, replied 

Dr. Slop, (parod)ing my uncle Toby's 
hobby-horsica! reflection ; though fully as 
hobby -horsical himself) — do I know, Captain 
Shandy, what might have become of the 
garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and 
confusion I find all things are in at present, 
but for the subordination of fingers and 
thumbs to******. — the application of which, 
Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in 
so a propos, that, without it, the cut upon 
my thumb might have been felt by the 
Shandy family as long as the Shandy family 
had a name. 



CHAP. XIV. 

fiET us go back to the ****** — in the last 
•chapter. 

It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at 
)oast it was so when eloquence flourished 
at Athens and Rome ; and would be so now, 
did orators wear mantles) not to mention 
*,ne name of a thing, when you had the thing 
about you in petto, ready to produce, pop, in 



the place you want it. A scar, an ax, a 
sword, a pink'd doublet, a rusty helmet, a 
pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a 
three-halfpenny pickle- jfbt ; — but above all, 
a tender infant royally accoutred. — Though 
if it was too young, and the oration as long aa 
Tully's second Philippic, — it must certainly 
have beshit the orator's mantle. — And then 
again, if too old, — it must have been un- 
wieldy and incommodious to his action, — 
so as to make him lose by his child almost 
as much as he could gain by it. — Otherwise, 
when a state-orator has hit the precise age 
to a minute, — hid his bambino in his mantle 
so cunningly that no mortal could smell it, 
— and produced it so critically, that no soul 
could say it came in by head and shoulders 
— Oh, Sirs, it has done wonders! — it has 
open'd the sluices, and turn'd the brains, 
and shook the principles, and unhinged the 
politics of half a nation ! 

These feats however are not to be done, 
except in those states and times, I say, 
where orators wore mantles, — and pretty 
large ones too, my brethren, with some 
twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good 
purple, superfine, marketable cloth in them, 
— with large flowing folds and doubles, and 
in a great style of design. — All which 
plainly shows, may it please your Worships, 
that the decay of eloquence, and the little 
good service it does at presenc, both within 
and without doors, is owing to nothing else 
in the world but short coats and the disuse 

of trunk-hose. We can conceal nothing 

under ours, Madam, worth showing. 



CHAP. XV. 

Dr. Slop was within an ace of being an 
exception to all this argumentation : for 
happening to have his green baize bag upon 
his knees when he began to parody my un- 
cle Toby, — 'twas as good as the best mantle 
in the world to him : for which purpose, 
when he foresaw the sentence would end 
in his new-invented forceps, he thrust his 
hand into the bag, in order to have them 
ready to clap in, when your Reverences 
took so much notice of the ****=* *, which, 
had he managed, — my uncle Toby had cer- 
tainly been overthrown : the sentence and 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



83 



the argument m that case jumping closely 
in one point, so like the two lines which 
form the salient angle of a ravelin, — Dr. 
Slop would never have given them up ; — 
and my uncle Toby would as soon have 
thought of flying, as taking them by force: 
but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely in pulling 
them out, it took off the whole effect, and, 
what was a ten times worse evil (for they 
seldom come alone in this life) in pulling 
out his forceps, his forceps unfortunately 
drew out the squirt along with it. 

When a proposition can be taken in two 
censes — 'tis a law in disputation, that the 
respondent may reply to which of the two 
he pleases, or finds most convenient for 
him. — This threw the advantage of the ar- 
gument quite on my uncle Toby's side. 

•' Good God !" cried my uncle Toby, " are 
''■children brought into the world with a 
u squirt ?" 

CHAP. XVI. 

— Upon my honor, Sir, you have torn 
every bit of skin quite off the back of both 
my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle 
Toby; — and you have crush'd all my 
knuckles into the bargain with them to a 

jelly. 'Tis your own fault, said Dr. 

Slop ; — you should have clinch'd your two 
fists together into the form of a child's 

head, as I told you, and sat firm. 1 did 

so, answered my uncle Toby. Then the 

points of my forceps have not been suffi- 
ciently arm'd, or the rivet wants closing, — 
or else the cut on my thumb has made me a 

little awkward, — or possibly 'Tis well, 

quoth my father, interrupting the detail of 
possibilities, — that the experiment was not 

first made upon my child's head-piece. 

Jt would not have been a cherry-stone the 

worse, answered Dr. Si. p. 1 maintain 

it, said my uncle Toby, it would have broke 
the cerebellum (unless indeed the skull had 
been as hard as a granado) and turn'd it all 

into a perfect posset. Pshaw ! replied 

Dr. Slop, a child's head is naturally as soft 
ks the pap of an apple ; — the sutures give 
way ; — and besides, I could have extracted 

f)V the feet after. Not you, said she. 

I rather wish you would begin that 
way, quoth my father. 

Pray do, dded my uncle Toby 



CHAP. XVII. 



And pray, good woman, after all, 

will you take upon you to say, it may not 
be the child's hip, as well as the child a 
head? — ('Tis most certainly the head, re- 
plied the midwife.) Because, continued 
Dr. Slop (turning to my father), as positive 
as these old ladies generally are, — 'tis a 
point very difficult to know, — and yet of 
the greatest consequence to be known , 

because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for 

the head, — there is a possibility (if it is a 
boy) that the forceps ******* 
******* 

What the possibility was, Dr. Slop 

whispered very low to my father, and then 

to my uncle Toby. There is no such 

danger, continued he, with the head. 

No, in truth, quoth my father ; — but when 
your possibility has taken place at the hip, 
— you may as well take off the head too. 

It is morally impossible that the 

reader should understand this, — 'tis enough 
Dr. Slop understood it; — so taking the 
green baize bag in his hand, with the help 
of Obadiah's pumps, he tripp'd pretty nim- 
bly, for a man of his size, across the room 
to the door ; — and from the door was shown 
the way, by the good old midwife, to my 
mother's apartments. 



CHAP. XVIII. 

It is two hours and ten minutes, — and 
no more, — cried my father, looking at his 
watch, since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived ; 
— and I know not how it happens, brother 
Toby, — but, to my imagination, it seems 
almost an age. 

Here — pray, Sir, take hold of my 

cap : — nay, take the bell along with it, and 
my pantofles too. 

Now, Sir, they are all at your service ; 
and I freely make you a present of 'em, on 
condition you give me all your attention to 
this chapter. 

Though my father said, " he knew not 
" how it happened" — yet he knew very 
well how it happen'd : — and at the instant 
he spoke it, was predetermined in his mind 
to give my uncle Toby a clear account of 
the matter, by a metaphysical dissertation 



S4 LIFE AND 

upon the subject of duration and its simple 
modes, in order to show my uncle Toby by 
what mechanism and mensurations in the 
brain it came to pass, that the rapid suc- 
cession of their ideas, and the eternal scam- 
pering of the discourse from one thing to 
another, since Dr. Slop had come into the 
room, had lengthened out so short a period 

to so inconceivable an extent. " I know 

"not how it happens," — cried my father — 
u but it seems an age." 

'Tis owing entirely, quoth my uncle 

Toby, to the succession of our ideas. 

My father, who had an itch, in common 
with all philosophers, of reasoning upon 
every thing which happened, and account- 
ing for it too,— proposed infinite pleasure to 
himself in this, of the succession of ideas ; 
and had not the least apprehension of hav- 
ing it snatch'd out of his hands by my uncle 
Toby, who (honest man !) generally took 
every thing as it happened ; — and who of 
all things in the world troubled his brain 
the least with abstruse thinking ; — the ideas 
of time and space, — or how we came by 
those ideas, — or of what stuff they were 
made, — or whether they were born with us, 
—or we picked them up afterwards as we 
went along, — or whether we did it in frocks, 
— or not till we had got into breeches ; — 
with a thousand other inquiries and disputes 

about INFINITY, PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY, NE- 
CESSITY, and so forth, upon whose desperate 
and unconquerable theories so many fine 
heads have been turned and cracked, — 
never did my uncle Toby's the least injury 
at all; my father knew it, — and was no 
less surprised than he was disappointed with 
my uncle's fortuitous solution. 

Do you understand the theory of that 
affair 1 replied my father. 

Not I, quoth my uncle. 

— But you have some ideas, said my 
lather, of what you talk about 1 

No more than my horse, replied my uncle 
Tooy. 

Gracious Heaven ! cried my father, look- 
ing upwards, and clasping his two hands 
together, — there is a worth in thy honest 
ignorance, brother Toby; — 'twere almost a 
pity to exchange it for a knowledge. — But 
I'll tell tnee. 

To understand what Time is aright, 
without which we never can comprehend 



OPINIONS 

Infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the 
other, — we ought seriously to sit down and 
consider what idea it is we have of duration, 
so as to give a satisfactory account how we 

came by it. What is that to any body ] 

quoth my uncle Toby. * " For if you will 
"turn your eyes inwards upon your mind," 
continued my father, "and observe atten- 
tively, you will perceive, brother, that 
" whilst you and I are talking together, and 
" thinking, and smoking our pipes, or whilst 
" we receive successively ideas in our minds, 
" we know that we do exist ; and so we es- 
timate the existence, or the continuation 
" of the existence of ourselves, or any thing 
" else, commensurate to the succession of 
"any ideas in our minds, the duration of 
" ourselves, or any such other thing co-ex- 
" isting with our thinking : — and so, accord- 
ing to that preconceived" You puzzle 

me to death, cried my uncle Toby. 

'Tis owing to this, replied my father, 

that in our computations of time we are so 
used to minutes, hours, weeks, and months 
— and of clocks (I wish there was not a 
clock in the kingdom) to measure out their 
several portions to us, and to those who 
belong to us, — that 'twill be well if, in 
time to come, the succession of our ideas 
be of any use or service to us at all. 

Now, whether we observe it or no, con- 
tinued my father, in every sound man's 
head there is a regular succession of ideas, 
of one sort or other, which follow each 
other in a train just like a train of ar- 
tillery ? said my uncle Toby A train of 

a fiddle-stick ! — quoth my father — which 
follow and succeed one another in our 
minds at certain distances, just like the 
images in the inside of a lantern turned 
round by the heat of a candle. — I declare, 
quoth my uncle Toby, mine are more like 

a smoke-jack. Then, brother Toby, 1 

have nothing more to say to you upon the 
subject, said my father. 



CHAP. XIX. 

What a conjecture was here lost ! 

My father, in one of his best explana- 
tory moods, — in eager pursuit of a meta- 



* Vide Locke 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

physical point, into the very regions where 
clouds and thick darkness would soon have 
encompassed it about ; — my uncle Toby, in 
one of the finest dispositions for it in the 
world;— his head like asmoke-jack; — the 
funnel nnswept, and the ideas whirling 
round and round about in it, all obfuscated 
and darkened over with fuliginous matter ! 

By the tomb-stone of Lucian, — if it is 

in being ; — if not, why then by his ashes ! 
vy the ashes of my dear Rabelais, and 

dearer Cervantes! my father and my 

uncle Toby's discourse upon time and eter- 
nity, — was a discourse devoutly to be 
wished for ! and the petulancy of my father's 
humor, in putting a stop to it as he did, was 
a robbery of the Ontologic Treasury of 
such a jewel, as no coalition of great occa- 
sions and great men are ever likely to re- 
store to it again. 



CHAP. XX. 

Though my father persisted in not going 
on with the discourse — yet he could not 
get my uncle Toby's smoke-jack out of his 
head, — piqued as he was at first with it; — 
there was something in the comparison 
at bottom which hit his fancy ; for which 
purpose, resting his elbow upon the table, 
and reclining the right side of his head upon 
the palm of his hand, — but looking first 
stedfastly in the fire, — he began to com- 
mune with himself, and philosophize about 
it: but his spirits being worn out by the 
fatigues of investigating new tracts, and 
the constant exertion of his faculties upon 
that variety of subjects which had taken 
their turn in the discourse — the idea of the 
smoke-jack soon turned all his ideas upside 
down, — so that he fell asleep almost before 
he knew what he was about. 

As for my uncle Toby, his smoke-jack 
had not made a dozen revolutions before he 

ell asleep also. Peace be with them 

both ! Dr. Slop is engaged with the 

midwife and my mother, above stairs. — r- 
Trim is busy in turning an old pair of jack- 
Doots into a couple of mortars, to be em- 
ployed in the siege of Messina next sum- 
mer; — and is this instant boring a touch- 
nole wi'h the point of a hot poker. All 



85 

my heroes are off my hands ; — 'tis the first 
time I have had a moment to spare, — an<3 
I'll make use of it, and write my preface. 



THE AUTHORS PREFACE. 

No, I'll not say a word about it ;- 



here 
it is. — In publishing it, — I have appealed to 
the world, — and to the world I leave it ;— 
it must speak for itself. 

All I know of the matter is, when I sat 
down, my intent was to write a good book, 
and as far as the tenuity of my understand- 
ing would hold out, — a wise, ay, and a dis- 
creet ; taking care only, as I went along, to 
put into it all the wit and the judgment (be 
it more or less) which the great Author and 
Bestower of them had thought tit originally 
to give me; — so that, as your Worships 
see, — 'tis just as God pleases. 

Now, Agalastes (speaking dispraisingly) 
saith, That there may be some wit in it, for 
aught he knows, — but no judgment at all : 
and Triptolemus and Phutatorius agreeing 
thereto, ask, How is it possible there should ? 
for that wit and judgment in this world 
never go together ; inasmuch as they are 
two operations differing from each other as 
wide as east from west. — So says Locke: — 
so are farting and hickuping, say I. But in 
answer to this, Didius the great church- 
lawyer, in his code de fartendi et illus- 
trandi fallaciis, doth maintain and make 
fully appear, That an illustration is no ar- 
gument: — nor do I maintain the wiping ol 
a looking-glass clean to be a syllogism ; — 
but you all, may it please your Worships, 
see the better for it ; — so that the main good 
these things do, is only to clarify the under- 
standing previous to the application of the 
argument itself, in order to free it from any 
little motes, or specks of opacidar matter, 
which, if left swimming therein, might hin- 
der a conception, and spoil all. 

Now, my dear anti-Shandeans, and thrice 
able critics and fellow-laborers (for to you I 
write this preface) — and to you, most subtle 
statesmen and discreet doctors (do, — pull 
off your beards) renowned for gravity and 
wisdom ; — Monopolus, my politician ; — Di 
dius, my counsel ; — Kysarcius, my frienc. . 
— Phutatorius, my guide; — Gastripheies 
the preserver of my life ; — Somnolentiius. 
the balm and repose of it, — not forgetting 
all others, as well sleeping a.s waking, ec- 
8 



86 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



cle3iastica a^ c^vil, whom for brevity, but 
nut of no r sentment to you, I lump all to- 
gether. Believe me, Right Worthy. 

My most zealous wish and fervent prayer 
in your behalf, and in my own too, in case 
the thing is not done already for us, — is, 
That the great gifts and endowments both 
of wit and judgment, with every thing 
which usually goes along with them, — such 
as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence, quick 
pares, and what not, — may this precious 
moment, without stint or measure, let or 
hindrance, be poured down warm as each 
of us could bear it, — scum and sediment and 
ail (for I would not have a drop lost) into 
ehe several receptacles, cells, cellules, domi- 
ciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare- 
places of our brains, in such sort, that 

they might continue to be injected and turn'd 
into, according to the true intent and mean- 
ing of my wish, until every vessel of them, 
both great and small, be so replenish'd, 
saturated, and filled up therewith, that no 
more, would it save a man's life, could pos- 
sibly be got either in or out. 

Bless us ! — what noble work we should 
make : — how should I tickle it off! — and 
what spirits should I find myself in, to be 
writing away for such readers ! — and you, 
— just Heaven ! — with what raptures would 
you sit and read ! — but oh ! — 'tis too much ! 
— I am sick, — I faint away deliciously at 
the thoughts of it! — 'tis more than nature 
Can bear ! — lay hold of me, — I am giddy, — 
I am stone blind, — I am dying, — I am gone. 

Help! Help! Help!— But hold,— I 

grow something better again, for I am be- 
ginning to foresee, when this is over, that 
as we shall all of us continue to be great 
wits, — we should never agree amongst our- 
selves one day to an end ; — there would be 
so much satire and sarcasm, — scoffing and 
flouting, with rallying and reparteeing of 
it, — thrusting and parrying in one corner or 
another, — there would be nothing but mis- 
chief among us. Chaste stars ! what 

biting and scratching, and what a racket 
and a clatter we should make, what with 
breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and 
hitting- of sore places, — there would be no 
sucn thing as living for us. 
. But then again, as we should all of us be 
men of great, judgment, we should make up 
matters as fast as ever they went wrong; 



and though we should abominate each other 
ten times worse than so many devils 01 
devilesses, we should nevertheless, my dear 
creatures, be all courtesy and kindness, 
milk and honey, — 'twould be a second land 
of promise, — a paradise upon earth, if there 
was such a thing' to be had ; — so that, upon 
the whole, we should have done well enough. 

All I fret and fume at, and what most dis- 
tresses my invention at present, is how to 
bring the point itself to bear ; for as your 
Worships well know, that of these heavenly 
emanations of wit and judgment, which I 
have so bountifully wished both for your 
Worships and myself, — there is but a cer- 
tain quantum stored up for us all, for the 
use and behoof of the whole race of man- 
kind ; and such small modicums of 'em are 
only sent forth into this wide world, circu- 
lating here and there in one bye-corner 01 
another, — and in such narrow streams, and 
at such prodigious intervals from each other, 
that one would wonder how it holds out, or 
could be sufficient for the wants and emer- 
gencies of so many great states and popu- 
lous empires. 

Indeed, there is one thing to be consid- 
ered: That in Nova Zembla, North Lap- 
land, and in all those cold and dreary tracks 
of the globe which lie more directly under 
the arctic and antarctic circles, where the 
whole province of a man's concernments 
lies for near nine months together within 
the narrow compass of his cave, — where 
the spirits are compressed almost to nothing, 
— and where the passions of a man, with 
every thing which belongs to them, are as 
frigid as the zone itself, — there the least 
quantity of judgment imaginable does the 
business ; — and of wit, — there is a total and 
an absolute saving, — for -as not one spark 
is wanted, — so not one spark is given. An- 
gels and ministers of grace defend us ! what 
a dismal thing would it have been to have 
governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, 
or made a treaty, or run a match, or wrote 
a book, or got a child, or held a provincial 
chapter there, with so plentiful a lack of 
wit and judgment about us ! — For mercy's 
sake, let us think no more about it, but 
travel on as fast as we can southwards into 
Norway, — crossing over Swedeland, if you 
please, through the small riangular prov- 
ince of Angermania, to the lake of Bothnia, 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



67 



roasting along- it through East and West 
Bothnia, down to Carclia, and so on, through 
all those states and provinces which border 
upon the far side of the Gulf of Finland, and 
the north-east of the Baltic, up to Peters- 
burgh, and just stepping into Ingria; — then 
stretching over directly from thence through 
the north parts of the Russian empire, leav- 
ing Siberia a little upon the left hand, till 
we got into the very heart of Russia and 
Asiatic Tartary. 

Now through this long tour which I have 
*.ed you, you observe the good people are 
oetter off by far, than in the polar countries 

which we have just left: for if you hold 

your hand over your eyes, and look very 
attentively, you may perceive some small 
glimmerings (as it were) of wit, with a 
comfortable provision of good plain house- 
hold judgment, which, taking the quality 
and quantity of it together, they make a 
very good shift with ; — and had they either 
more of one or the other, it would destroy 
the proper balance betwixt them ; and I am 
satisfied, moreover, they would want occa- 
sions to put them to use. 

Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again 
into this warmer and more luxuriant island, 
where you perceive the spring-tide of our 
blood and humors runs high ; — where we 
have more ambition, and pride, and envy, 
and lechery, and other whoreson passions 
upon our hands to govern and subject to 
reason, — the height of our wit, and the 
depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly 
proportioned to the length and breadth of 
our necessities; — and accordingly we have 
them sent down amongst us in such a flow- 
ing kind of decent and creditable plenty, 
that no one thinks he has any cause to com- 
plain. 

It must however be confessed on this 
head, that, as our air blows hot and cold, — 
wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have 
them in no regular and settled way: — so 
tha x , sometimes for near half a century to- 
g-ether, there shall be very little wit or 
judgment either to be seen or heard of 
amongst us : — tfte small channels of them 
6hall seem quite dried up; — then all of a 
sudden the sluices shall break out, and take 
a fit of running again like fury, — you would 

think they would never stop : and then 

it is that, in writing, and fighting, and 



twenty other gallant things, we drive all 
the world before us. 

It is by these observations, and a warv 
reasoning by analogy in that kind of argu 
mentative process, which Suidas calls dia- 
lectic induction, — that. I draw and set up 
this position as most true and veritable: 

That of these two luminaries, so much of 
their irradiations are suffered from time to 
time to shine down upon us, as lie, whose 
infinite wisdom which dispenses every 
thing in exact weight and measure, knows 
will just serve to light us on our way in 
this night of our obscurity ; so that your 
Reverences and Worships now find out, nor 
is it a moment longer in my power to con- 
ceal it from you, That the fervent wish in 
your behalf with which I set out, was no 
more than the first insinuating How d'ye 
of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, 
as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, 
into silence. For alas! could this effusion 
of light have been as easily procured, as 
the exordium wished it, — I tremble to think 
how many thousands for it, of benighted 
travellers (in the learned sciences at least) 
must have groped and blundered on in the 
dark, all the nights of their lives, — running 
their heads against posts, and knocking out 
their brains,. without ever getting to their 
journey's end ; — some falling with their 
noses perpendicularly into sinks; — others 
horizontally with their tails into kennels : — 
Here one half of a learned profession tilting 
full bat against the other half of it ; and 
then tumbling and rolling one over the 
other in the dirt like hogs: — Here the 
brethren of another profession, who should 
have run in opposition to each other, flying 
on the .contrary, like a flock of wild geese, 
all in a row the same way. — What confu- 
sion! — what mistakes! — fiddlers and painters 
judging by their eyes and ears — admirable ! 
— trusting to the passions excited, — in an air 
sun*, or a story painted to the heart, — in- 
stead of measuring them by a quadrant ! 

In the fore-ground of this picture, a 
statesman turning the political wheel, like 
a brute, the wrong way round — against the 
stream of corruption, — by Heaven ! — instead 
of with it ! 

In this corner, a son of the divine Eseu* 
lapius, writing a book against predestina- 
tion; perhaps worse, — feeling his patient's 



SS LIFE AND 

puls^ ms'eaa of nis apothecary'? : — a bro- 
ther of the Faculty in the back-ground 
upon his knees in tears, — drawing the cur- 
tains of a mangled victim, to beg his for- 
giveness : — offering a fee, instead of taking 
one. 

In that spacious hall, a coalition of the 
gown, from all the bars of it, driving a 
damn'd, dirty, vexatious cause before them, 
with all their might and main, the wrong 
way ! — kicking it out of the great doors 
instead of in ! — and with such fury in their 
looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in 
their manner of kicking it, as if the laws 
had been originally made for the peace 

and preservation of mankind ; perhaps 

a more enormous mistake committed by them 
still, — a litigated point fairly hung up ; — for 
instance, Whether John o'Nokes his nose 
could stand in Tom o'Stiles his face, with- 
out a trespass, or not? — rashly determined 
by them in five-and-twenty minutes, which, 
with the cautious pro's and con's required 
in so intricate a proceeding, might have 
taken up as many months ; — and if carried 
on upon a military plan, as your Honors 
know an action should be, with all the 
stratagems practicable therein, — such as 
feints, — forced marches, — surprises — am- 
buscades, — mask-batteries, and a thousand 
other strokes of generalship, which consist 
in catching at all advantages on both sides, 
--might reasonably have lasted them as 
many years, finding food and raiment all 
that term for a centumvirate of the profes- 
sion. 

As for the Clergy, — No ; — if I say a word 

against them, I'll be shot. 1 have no 

desire ; and besides, if I had, — I durst not 
for my soul touch upon the subject. With 
such weak nerves and spirits, and in the 
condition I am in at present, 'twould be as 
much as my life was worth, to deject and 
contrist myself with so bad and melancholy 
an account; — and therefore 'tis safer to 
draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, 
as fast as I can, to the main and principal 
point I have undertaken to clear up ; — and 
that is, How it comes to pass, that your men 
of least wit are reported to be men of most 
judgment? — But mark — I say, reported to 
he ; — for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a 
report, and which, like cwenty others taken 
o every day upon trust, I maintain to be 



OPINIONS 

a vile and a malicious report into the bar 
gain. 

This, by the help of the observation ai 
ready premised, and I hope already weigh 
ed and perpended by your Reverences and 
Worships, I shall forthwith make appear. 
, I hate set dissertations; and, above a.l 
things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest 
things in one of them, to darken your hy- 
pothesis by placing a number of tall, opake 
words, one before another, in a right line, be- 
twixt yourown and your reader's conception, 
— when, in all likelihood, if you had looked 
about, you might have seen something stand- 
ing, or hanging up, which would have clear- 
ed the point at once ; — " for what hindrance, 
" hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire of 
"knowledge bring to any man, if even 
" from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter- 
" mitten, a truckle for a pulley, the lid of a 
" goldsmith's crucible, an oil-bottle, an old 
" slipper, or a cane-chair 1" — I am this mo- 
ment sitting upon one. Will you give me 
leave to illustrate this affair of wit and judg- 
ment, by the two knobs on the top of the 
back of it? — they are fastened on, you see, 
with two pegs stuck slightly into two gim- 
blet-holes, and will place what I have to 
say in so clear a light, as to let you see 
through the drift and meaning of my whole 
preface, as plainly as if every point and 
particle of it was made up of sun-beams. 

I enter now directly upon the point. 

— Here stands wit, — and there stands 
judgment, close beside it, just like the two 
knobs I'm speaking of, upon the back of this 
self-same chair on which I am sitting. 

You see, they are the highest and most 
ornamental parts of its frame, — as wit and 
judgment are of ours, — and, like them too, 
indubitably both made and fitted to go to- 
gether, in order, as we may say in all such 
cases of duplicated embellishment, to answer 
one another. 

Now, for the sake of an experiment, and 
for the clearer illustrating this matter, — 
let us for a moment take off one of these 
two curious ornaments (I care not which^ 
from the point or pinnacle of the chair it 
now stands on ; — nay, don't laugh at it,— 
but did you ever see, in the whole course 
of your lives, such a ridiculous business as 
this has made of it? — Why, 'tis as ir iserable 
a sight as a sow with one ear ; and ohere is 



Just as much sense and symmetry in the 

one as in the other. Do, — pray, get off 

your seats, only to take a view of it. — Now, 
would any man who valued his character a 
straw, have turned a piece of work out of 
iiis hand in such a condition? — Nay, lay 
vour hands upon your hearts, and answer 
this plain question, Whether this one single 
knob, which now stands here like a block- 
head by itself, can serve any purpose upon 
earth, but to put one in mind of the want 
of the other 1 — and let me farther ask, in 
case the chair was your own, if you would 
not in your consciences think, rather than 
be as it is, that it would be ten times better 
without any knobs at all 7 

Now these two knobs, or top-ornaments 
of the mind of man, which crown the whole 
entablature, — being, as I said, wit and judg- 
ment, which, of all others, as I have 1 proved 
it, are the most needful, — the most priz'd, 
— the most calamitous to be without, and 
consequently the hardest to come at; — for 
all these reasons put together, there is not 
a mortal among us so destitute of a love of 
good fame or feeding, — or so ignorant of 
what will do him good therein, — who does 
not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own 
mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master 
of the one or the other, and indeed of both 
of them, if the thing seems any way feasi- 
ble, or likely to be brought to pass. 

Now, your graver gentry having little or 
no kind of chance in aiming at the one, — 
unless they laid hold of the other, — pray 
what do you think would become of them ! 
Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravi- 
ties, they must e'en have been contented 
to have gone with their insides naked : — 
this was not to be borne but by an effort of 
philosophy not to be supposed in the case 
we are upon ; — so that no one could well 
have been angry with them, had they been 
satisfied with what little they could have 
snatched up and secreted under their cloaks 
and great periwigs, had they not raised a 
hue and cry at the same time against the 
(awful owners. 

I need not tell your Worships, that this 
was done with so much cunning and arti 
hce, — that the great Locke, who was seldom 
outwitted by false sounds, — was neverthe- 
less bubbled here. The cry, it seems, 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 89 

with the help cf great wigs, grave faces, 
and other implements of deceit, was rendei • 
ed so general a one against the jwor wits 
in this matter, that the philosopher himself 
was deceived by it: — it was his glory to 
free the world from the lumber of a thou- 
sand vulgar errors; — but this was not of the 
number; so that, instead of sitting down 
coolly, as such a philosopher should have 
done, to have examined the matter of fact 
before he philosophized upon it, — on the 
contrary he took the fact for granted, and 
so join'd in with the cry, and halloo'd it aa 
boisterously as the rest. 

This has been made the Magna Charta 
of stupidity ever since : — but your Rever- 
ences plainly see, it has been obtained in 
such a manner, that the title to it is not 

worth a groat: which, by the bye, is 

one of the many and vile impositions which 
gravity and grave folks have to answer for 
hereafter. 

As for great wigs, upon which I may be 
thought to have spoken my mind too freely. 
— I beg leave to qualify whatever has been 
unguardedly said to their dispraise or preju 
dice, by one general declaration, — That I 
have no abhorrence whatever, nor do I de- 
test and abjure either great wigs or long 
beards, any farther than when I see they 
are bespoke and let grow on purpose to carry 
on this self-same imposture, — for any pur- 
pose. — Peace be with them ! — O^r* Mark 
only, — I write not for them. 



CHAP. XXI. 

Every day for at least ten years together, 
did my father resolve to have it mended: — 
'tis not mended yet. — No family but ours 
would have borne with it an hour; — and, what 
is most astonishing, there was not a subject 
in the world upon which my father was so 

eloquent, as upon that of door-hinges: 

and yet at the same time, he was certainly 
one of the greatest bubbles to them, I think, 
that history can produce: his rhetoric and 
conduct were at perpetual handy-cuffs.— 
Never did the parlor-door open, — but hw 
philosophy or his principles fell a victim to 
it. — Three drops ©f oil with a feather, and 
a smart stroke of a hammer, had saved his 



vas so deep and solemn a one, and what I honor for ever. 
M 



90 



LIFE AND 



-w — Inconsistent soul that man is ! — lan- 
guisning under wounds, which he has the 
power to hesl ! — his whole life a contradic- 
tion to his knowledge! — his reason, that 
precious gift of God to him, — (instead of 
pouring in oil) serving but to sharpen his 
sensibilities,- -to multiply his pains, and 
render him more melancholy and uneasy 
under them ! — Poor unhappy creature, that 
he should do so! — Are not the necessary 
causes of misery in this life enough, but he 
must add voluntary ones to his stock of sor- 
row ! — struggle against evils which cannot 
be avoided ! — and submit to others, which a 
tenth part of the trouble they create him 
would remove from his heart for ever ! 

By. all that is good and virtuous, if there 
are three drops of oil to be got, and a ham- 
mer to be found within ten miles of Shandy- 
hall, — the parlor door-hinge shall be mended 
this reign. 



CHAP. XXII. 

When Corporal Trim had brought his 
two mortars to bear, he was delighted with 
his handy work above measure ; and know- 
ing what a pleasure it would be to his mas- 
ter to see them, he was not able to resist 
the desire he had of carrying them directly 
into his parlor. 

Now, next to the moral lesson I had in 
view in mentioning the affair of hinges, I 
had a speculative consideration arising out 
of it, and it is this : — 

Had the parlor-door opened and turn'd 
upon its hinges, as a door should do, — 

Or, for example, as cleverly as our gov- 
ernment has been turning upon its hinges, 
— (that is, in case things have all along 
gone well with your Worship, — otherwise 
I give, up my simile) — in this case, I say, 
there had been no danger, either to master 
or man, in Corporal Trim's peeping in : the 
moment he had beheld my father and my 
uncle Toby fast asleep, — the respectfulness 
of his carriage was such, he would have 
retired as silent as death, and left them 
both in their arm-chairs, dreaming as happy 
as he nad found them : but the thing was, 
morally speaking, so very impracticable, 
that for the many year? m which this hinge 



OPINIONS 

was suffered to be out of order, and amongst 
the hourly grievances my father submitted 
to upon its account, — this was one ; that 
he never folded his arms to take his nap 
after dinner, but the thoughts of being un- 
avoidably awakened by the first person who 
should open the door, was always upper- 
most in his imagination, and so incessantly 
stepp'd in betwixt him and the first balmy 
presage of his repose, as to rob him, as he 
often declared, of the whole sweets of it. 

" When things move upon bad hinges., 
" an' please your Worships, how can it be 
"otherwise!" 

Pray what's the master! who is there? 
cried my father, waking, the moment the 

door began to creak. 1 wish the smith 

would give a peep at that confounded hinge. 

'Tis nothing, an' please your Honor, 

said Trim, but two mortars I am bringing 

in. They shan't make a clatter with 

them here, cried my father hastily. If 

Dr. Slop has any drugs to pound, let him 

do it in the kitchen. May it please your 

Honor, cried Trim, they are two mortar- 
pieces for a siege next summer, which I 
have been making out of a pair of jack- 
boots, which Obadiah told me your Honor 

had left off wearing. By Heaven ! cried 

my father, springing out of his chair, as he 
swore, — I have not one appointment be- 
longing to me which I set so much store 
by, as I do by these jack-boots : — they were 
our great-grandfather's, brother Toby: — 

they were hereditary. Then I fear, 

quoth my uncle Toby, Trim has cut off the 

entail. 1 have only cut off the tops, an' 

please your Honor, cried Trim. 1 hate 

perpetuities as much as any man alive, cried 
my father, — but these jack-boots, continued 
he (smiling, though very angry at the same 
time), have been in the family, brother, 
ever since the civil wars; — Sir Roger 
Shandy wore them at the battle of Mars- 
ton-Moor. — I declare I would not have 

taken ten pounds for them. I'll pay you 

the money, brother Shandy, quoth my uncle 
Toby, looking at the two mortars with in- 
finite pleasure, and putting his hand into 
his breeches'-pocket, as he viewed them, — 
I'll pay you the ten pounds this moment, 
with all my heart and soul. 

Brother Toby, replied my father altering 
his tone, you care not what mone) you lis- 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



9* 



eipate and throw away, provided, continued 

he, 'tis but upon a siege. Jlave I not 

one hundred and twenty pounds a year, 
besides my half-pay? cried my uncle Toby. 
What is that, — replied my father has- 
tily, — to ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots? 
— twelve guineas for your pontoons? — 
half as much for your Dutch draw-bridge ? — 
to say nothing of the train of little brass 
artillery you bespoke last week, with twenty 
other preparations for the siege of Messina ! 
Believe me, dear brother Toby, continued 
my father, taking him kindly by the hand, 
— these military operations of yours are 
above your strength : — you mean well, bro- 
ther, — but they carry you into greater ex- 
penses than you were at first aware of; — 
and take my word, dear Toby, they will in 
the end quite ruin your fortune, and make 

a beggar of you. What signifies it if 

*hey do, brother, replied my uncle Toby, so 
long as we 'know 'tis for the good of the 
nation ? 

My father could not help smiling for his 
soul : — his anger at the worst was never 
more than a spark ; and the zeal and sim- 
plicity of Trim, — and the generous (though 
bobby-tiorsical) gallantry of my uncle Toby, 
brought him into perfect good humor with 
them in an instant. 

Generous souls ! — God prosper you both, 
and your mortar-pieces too ! quoth my father 
to himself. 



CHAP. XXIII. 

All is quiet and hush, cried my father, at 
least above stairs: — I hear not one foot 
stirring. — Prithee, Trim, who's in the 

kitchen? There is no one soul in the 

kitchen, answered Trim, making a low bow 

as he spoke, except Dr. Slop. Confusion ! 

cried my father (getting up upon his legs 
a second time) — not one single thing has 
gone right this day ! Had I faith in as- 
trology, brother, (which, by the bye, my 
father had) I would have sworn some retro- 
grade planet was hanging over this unfor- 
tunate house of mine, and turning every 
individual thing in it out of its place. — 
Why, I thought Dr. Slop had been above 
stairs with my wile ; and so said you. — 



What can the fellow be puzzling about, in 

the kitchen ! He is busy, an' please 

your Honor, replied Trim, in making" a 

bridge. 'Tis very obliging in him, quoth 

my uncle Toby : pray give my humble 

service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him 1 
thank him heartily. 

You must know, my uncle Toby mistook 
the bridge, — as widely as my father mis- 
took the mortars : — but to understand how 
my uncle Toby could mistake the bridge, — 
I fear I must give you an exact account of 
the road which led to it ; — or, to drop my 
metaphor (for there is nothing more dis- 
honest in an historian than the use of one) 
— in order to conceive the probability of 
this error in my uncle Toby aright, I must 
give you some account of an adventure of 
Trim's, though much against my will ; 1 
say much against my will, only because the 
story, in one sense, is certainly out of ita 
place here ; for by right, it should come in, 
either amongst the anecdotes of my uncle 
Toby's amours with Widow Wad man, in 
which Corporal Trim was no mean actor, 
— or else in the middle of his and my uncle 
Toby's campaigns on the bowling-green, 
for it will do very well in either place ; — 
but then if I reserve it for either of those 
parts of my story, — I ruin the story I'm 
upon ; — and if I tell it here, — I anticipate 
matters, and ruin it there. 

— What would your Worships have me 
to do in this case ? 

— Tell it, Mr. Shandy, by all means. 

You are a fool, Tristram,. if you do. 

ye powers! (for powers ye are, and 
great ones too) — which enable mortal man 
to tell a story worth the hearing, — that 
kindly show him where he is to begin it, — 
and where he is to end it, — what he is tc 
put into it, — and what he 's to leave out,— 
how much of it he is tc cast into a shade,— 
and whereabouts he is to throw his light!— 
Ye who preside o\er this vast empire of 
biographical freebooters, and see how many 
scrapes and plunges your subjects hourly 
fall into, — will you do one thing 1 

1 beg and beseech you (in case you will 
do nothing better for us), that wherever in 
any part of your dominions it so foils nut, 
that three several roads meet in one point, 
as they have Hone ;ast here, — that at least 
you set up a guid< -post in the centre of 



92 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



them, in more charity, to direct an uncer- 
tain devil which of the three he is to take. 



CHAP. XXIV. 

Though the shock my uncle Toby re- 
ceived the year after the demolition of 
Dunkirk, in his affair with Widow Wad- 
man, had fixed him in a resolution never 
more to think of the sex, — or of aught which 
belonged to it; — yet Corporal Trim had 
made no such bargain with himself. — In- 
deed, in my uncle Toby's case there was a 
strange and unaccountable concurrence of 
circumstances, which insensibly drew him 
in, to lay siege to that fair and strong 
citadel. — In Trim's case there was a con- 
currence of nothing in the world, but of 
him and Bridget in the kitchen; — though 
in truth, the love and veneration he bore 
his master was such, and so fond was he of 
imitating him in all he did, that had my 
uncle Toby employed his time and genius 
in tagging of points, — I am persuaded the 
honest Corporal would have laid down his 
arms, and followed his example with pleas- 
ure. When therefore my uncle Toby sat 
down before the mistress, — Corporal Trim 
incontinently took ground before the maid. 

Now, my dear friend Garrick, whom I 
have so much cause to esteem and honor — 
(why or wherefore, 'tis no matter) — can it 
escape your penetration, — I defy it, — that 
so many playwrights, and opificers of chit- 
chat, have ever since been working upon 
Trim's and my uncle Toby's pattern? — I 
care not what Aristotle, or Pacuvius, or 
Bossu, or Ricaboni, say — (though I never 
read one of them) — there is not a greater 
difference between a single-horse chair and 
Madam Pompadour's vis a vis, than betwixt 
a single amour and an amour thus nobly 
doubled, and going upon all-four,- prancing 
throughout a grand drama. — Sir, a simple, 
single, silly affair of that kind, — is quite 
iost in rive acts ; — but that is neither here 
nor there. 

After a series of attacks and repulses in 
a course of nine month" on my uncle Toby's 
quarter, a most minute account of every 
particular of which shall be given in its 
oroper D.ace, my uncle Toby, honest man ! 



found it necessary to draw off his forces and 
raise the siege somewhat indignantly. 

Corporal Trim, as I said, had made no 
such bargain either with himself, — or with 
any one else ; — the fidelity however of his 
heart not suffering him to go into a house 
which his master had forsaken with disgust, 
— he contented himself with turning his 
part of the siege into a blockade; — that is, 
he kept others off; — for though he never 
afterwards went to the house, yet he never 
met Bridget in the village but he would 
either nod, or wink, or smile, or look kindly 
at her, — or (as circumstances directed) he 
would shake her by the hand, — or ask her 
lovingly how she did, — or would give her a 
ribbon, — and now and then, though never 
but when it could be done with decorum, 
would give Bridget a . 

Precisely in this situation did these things 
stand for five years ; that is, from the de- 
molition of Dunkirk in the year thirteen, to 
the latter end of my uncle Toby's campaign 
in the year eighteen, which was about six 
or seven weeks before the time I'm speak- 
ing of, when Trim, as his custom was, 

after he had put my uncle Toby to bed, 
going down one moon-shiny night to see 
that every thing was right at his fortifica- 
tions, — in the lane separated from the 
bowling-green with flowering shrubs and 
holly, — he espied his Bridget. 

As the Corporal thought there was no- 
thing in the world so well worth showing as 
the glorious works which he and my uncle 
Toby had made, Trim courteously and gal- 
lantly took her by the hand, and led her in. 
This was not done so privately, but that the 
foul-mouth'd trumpet of Fame carried it 
from ear to ear, till at length it reach'd my 
father's, with this untoward circumstance 
along with it, that my uncle Toby's curious 
draw-bridge, constructed and painted after 
the Dutch fashion, and which went quite 
across the ditch, — was broke down, and 
somehow or other crushed all to pieces, that 
very night. 

My father, as you have observed, had no 
great esteem for my uncle Toby's Hobby- 
horse ; he thought it the most ridiculous 
horse that ever gentleman mounted; and 
indeed, unless my uncle Toby vexed him 
about it, could never think of it once, with- 
out smiling at it; — so that it could n^.-er 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



93 



get lame, or happen any mischance, but it 
tickled my father's imagination beyond 
measure ; but this being an accident much 
more to his humor than any one which had 
yet befallen it, it proved an inexhaustible 
fund of entertainment to him. — Well, — but 
dear Toby ! my father would say, do tell 
me seriously how this affair of the bridge 
happened. — —How can you tease me so 
much about it] my uncle Toby would re- 
ply ; — I have told it you twenty times, word 

for word, as Trim told it me. Prithee, 

now was it then, Corporal] my father 

would cry, turning to Trim. It was a 

mere misfortune, an' please your Honor; — 
I was showing Mrs. Bridget our fortifica- 
tions; and in going too near the edge of 

the fosse, I unfortunately slipp'd in 

Very well, Trim ! my father would cry — 
(smiling mysteriously, and giving a nod, — 

but without interrupting him) and being 

link'd fast, an' please your Honor, arm in 
arm with Mrs. Bridget, I dragg'd her after 
me ; by means of which she fell backwards 
soss against the bridge ; — and Trim's foot 
(my uncle Toby would cry, taking the story 
out of his mouth) getting into the cuvette, 

he tumbled full against the bridge too. 

It was a thousand to one, my uncle Toby 
would add, that the poor fellow did not 

break his leg. Ay, truly, my father 

would say, — a limb is soon broke, brother 

Toby, in such encounters. And so, an' 

please your Honor, the bridge, which your 
Honor knows was a very slight one, was 
broke down betwixt us, and splintered all 
to pieces. 

At other times, but especially when my 
uncle Toby was so unfortunate as to say a 
syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards, — 
my father would exhaust all the stores of 
his eloquence (which indeed were very 
great) in a panegyric upon the battering- 
rams of the ancients — the vinea which Al- 
exander made use of at the siege of Troy. 
— He would tell my uncle Toby of the 
catapulta of the Syrians, which threw such 
monstrous stones so many hundred feet, and 
shook the strongest bulwarks from their 
very foundations; — he would go on and 
describe the wonderful mechanism of the 
balista, which Marcellinus makes so much 
rout about ! — the terrible effects of the py- 
raboli t which cast fire 



trrebra and scorpio, which cast javclins.- 
But what are these, would he say, to tly) 
destructive machinery cf Corporal Trim !— 
Believe me, brother Toby, no bridge or 
bastion, or sally-port, that ever was con- 
structed in this world, can hold out against 
such artillery. 

My uncle Toby would never attempt any 
defence against the force of this ridicule, 
but that of redoubling the vehemence of 
smoking his pipe ; in doing which, he raised 
so dense a vapor one night after supper, 
that it set my father, who was a little 
phthisical, into a suffocating fit of violent 
coughing ; my uncle Toby leap'd up, with- 
out feeling the pain upon his groin, — and, 
with infinite pity, stood beside his brother's 
chair, tapping his back with one hand, and 
holding his head with the other, and from 
time to time wiping his eyes with a clean 
cambric handkerchief, which he pull'd out 
of his pocket. The affectionate and endear- 
ing manner in which my uncle Toby did 
these little offices, — cut my father through 
his reins, for the pain he had just been giv- 
ing him. May my brains be knock'd out 

with a battering-ram or a catapulta, I care 
not which, quoth my father to himself— if 
ever I insult this worthy soul more ! 



CHAP. XXV. 



The draw-bridge being held irreparable, 
Trim was ordered directly to set about an- 
other, but not upon the same model ; for 

Cardinal Alberoni's intrigues at that time 
being discovered, and my uncle Toby rightly 
foreseeing that a flame would inevitably 
break out betwixt Spain and the Empire, 
and that the operations of the ensuing cam- 
paign must in all likelihood be either in 
Naples or Sicily, — he determined upon an 
Italian bridge — (my uncle Toby, by the bye, 
was not far out of his conjectures) ; — but 
my father, who was infinitely the better 
politician, and took the lead as far of my 
uncle Toby in the cabinet, as my uncle Toby 
took it of him in the field, — convinced him 
that if the King of Spain and the Emperot 
went together by the ears, — England 
France, and Holland, must, by force of then 
the danger of the ' pre-engagements, all enter the lists too' — 



94 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



and if so, he would say, the combatants, 
brother Toby as sure as we are alive, will 
fall to it again, pell-mell, upon the old 
prize-fighting stage of Flanders, — then what 
will you do with your Italian bridge ] 

We will go on with it then upon the old 
model, cried my uncle Toby. 

When Corporal Trim had about half fin- 
ished it in that style, — my uncle Toby 
found out a capital defect in it, which he 
had never thoroughly considered before. It 
turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends 
of it, opening in the middle, one half of 
which turning to one side of the fosse, and 
the other to the other ; the advantage of 
which was this, that by dividing the weight 
of the bridge into two equal portions, it em- 
powered my uncle Toby to raise it up or let 
it down with the end of his crutch, and with 
one hand, which, as his garrison was weak, 
was as much as he could well spare ; — but 
the disadvantages of such a construction 
were insurmountable; — for by this means, 
he would say, I leave one half of my bridge 
in my enemy's possession; — and pray, of 
what use is the other ] 

The natural remedy for this was, no 
doubt, to have his bridge fast only at one 
end with hinges, so that the whole might 
be lifted up together, and stand bolt up- 
right ; — but that was rejected, for the reason 
given above. 

For a whole week after, he was deter- 
mined in his mind to have one of that par- 
ticular construction which is made to draw 
back horizontally, to hinder a passage; and 
to thrust forwards again, to gain a passage, 
— of which sorts your Worships might have 
seen three famous ones at Spires before its 
destruction — and one now at Brisac, if I 
mistake not ; — but my father advising my 
uncle Toby, with great earnestness, to have 
nothing more to do with thrusting bridges ; 
—and my uncle foreseeing moreover that it 
would but perpetuate the memory of the 
Corporal's misfortune, — he changed his 
mind for that of the Marquis d'Hopital's in- 
vention, which the younger Bernoulli has 
fco well and learnedly described, as your 

Worships may see Act. Erud. Lips. 

an. 1695: — to these a lead weight is an 
rcernal balance, and keeps watch as well as 
a cfMiole of sentinels, inasmuch as the con- 
struction of tnem was a curve line approxi- 



mating to a cycloid if not a cycloid 

itself. 

My uncle Toby understood the nature of 
a parabola as well as any man in England : 
— but was not quite such a master of the 
cycloid : — he talked however about it every 

day rthe bridge went not forwards. 

We'll ask somebody about it, cried my 
uncle Toby to Trim. 



CHAP. XXVI. 

When Trim came in and told my father, 
that Dr. Slop was in the kitchen, and busy 

in making a bridge, — my uncle Toby, 

the affair of the jack-boots having just then 
raised a train of military ideas in his brain, 

took it instantly for granted that Dr. 

Slop was making a model of the Marquis 

d'Hopital's bridge. 'Tis very obliging 

in him, quoth my uncle Toby ; — pray give 
my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and 
tell him I thank him heartily. 

Had my uncle Toby's head been a Sa- 
voyard's box, and my father peeping in all 
the time at one end of it, — it could not 
have given him a more distinct conception 
of the operations of my uncle Toby's im- 
agination than what he had ; so, notwith- 
standing the catapulta and battering-ram, 
and his bitter imprecation about them, he 
was just beginning to triumph, — 

When Trim's answer in an instant tore 
the laurel from his brows, and twisted it to 
pieces. 



CHAP. XXVII. 

This unfortunate draw-bridge of 

yours, quoth my father, God bless your 

Honor, cried Trim, 'tis a bridge for mas- 
ter's nose. In bringing him into the 

world with his vile instruments, he has 
crush'd his nose, Susannah says, as flat as 
a pan-cake to his face, and he is making a 
false bridge with a piece of cotton, and a 
thin piece of whalebone out of Susannah'* 
stays, to raise it up. 

Lead me, brother Toby, cried n y 

father, to my room this instant. 



OF TRISTRAM SHAiNDY. 



CHAP. XXVIII. 

From the first moment I sat down to 
write my life for the amusement of the 
world, and my opinions for its instruction, 
lias a cloud insensibly been gathering- over 
my father. — A tide of little evils and dis- 
tresses has been setting in against him. — 
Not one thing, as he observed himself, has 
gone right : and now is the storm thicken'd 
and going to break, and pour down full 
upon his head, 

I enter upon this part of my story in the 
most pensive and melancholy frame of mind 
that ever sympathetic breast was touched 
with. — My nerves relax as I tell it. — Every 
line I write, I feel an abatement of the 
quickness of my pulse, and of that careless 
alacrity with it, which every day of my life 
prompts me to say and write a thousand 
things I should not: — and this moment, 
that I last dipp'd my pen into my ink, I 
could net help taking notice what a cautious 
air of sad composure and solemnity there 
appear'd in my manner of doing it. — Lord ! 
how different from the rash jerks and hare- 
brain'd squirts thou art wont, Tristram, to 
transact it with in other humors — dropping 
thy pen, — spurting thy ink about thy table 
and thy books, — as if thy pen and thy ink, 
thy books and thy furniture, cost thee 
nothing ! 



CHAP. XXIX. 

1 won't go about to argue the point 

with you: — 'tis so; — and I am persuaded 
of it, Madam, as much as can be, " That 
" both man and woman bear pain or sorrow 
" (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best 
"in a horizontal position." 

The moment my father got up into his 
chamber, he threw himsel 'prostrate across 
his bed in the wildest disorder imaginable, 
but at the same time in the most lamenta- 
ble attitude of a man borne down with sor- 
rows, that ever the eye of pity dropp'd a 
tear for. — The palm of his right hand, as he 
f el] upon the bed, receiving his forehead, 
and r-overino- the greatest part of both his 
eves, gent.y sunk down with his head (his 
elbow giving way backwards) till his nose 



touch'd the quilt; his left a, m hung in^on- 
nibly over the side of the bed, his knjrkles 
reclining upon the handle of the chamber- 
pot, which peep'd out beyond the valance ; 
— his right leg (his left being drawn up to- 
wards his body) hung half over the side of 
the bed, the edge of it pressing upon his 
shin-bone, — He felt it not. A fix'd, inflexi- 
ble sorrow took possession of every line 
of his face. — He sigh'd once, — heav'd his 
breast often, — but uttered not a word. 

An old set-stitch'd chair, valanced and 
fringed around with party-colored worsted 
bobs, stood at the bed's head, opposite to the 
side where my father's head reclin'd. — My 
uncle Toby sat him down in it. 

Before an affliction is digested, — consola- 
tion ever comes too soon ; — and after it is 
digested, — it comes too late ; so that you see, 
Madam, there is but a mark between these 
two, as fine almost as a hair, for a com- 
forter to take aim at. — My uncle Toby was 
always either on this side or on that of it, 
and would often say, he believed in his 
heart he could as soon hit the longitude ; for 
this reason, when he sat down in the chair, 
he drew the curtain a little forwards, and 
having a tear at every one's service, — he 
pull'd out a cambric handkerchief, — gave 
a low sigh, — but held his peace. 



CHAP. XXX. 

"All is not gain that is got into the 

" purse." So that, notwithstanding my 

father had the happiness of reading the 
oddest books in the universe, and had, 
moreover, in himself, the oddest way of 
thinking that ever man in it was bless'd 
with, yet it had this drawback upon him 

after all, That it laid him open to some 

of the oddest and most whimsical distresses; 
of which this particular one, which he sun* 
under at present, is as strong an example as 
can be given. 

No doubt, the breaking down of the bridge 
of a child's nose, by the edge of a pair o J * 
forceps, — however scientifically applied.— 
would vex any man in the world who was 
at so much pains in begetting a clma as my 
father was ; — yet it will not account for the 
extravagance of his affliction, nor will 'i 



36 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



justify the unchristian manner he aban- 
doned and surrendered himself up to. 

To explain this, I must leave him upon 
the bed for half an hour, — and my uncle 
Toby, in his old fringed chair, sitting beside 
him. 



CHAP. XXXI. 

1 think it a very unreasonable de- 
mand, cried my great-grandfather, twisting 
up the paper, and throwing it UDon the table. 

By this account, Madam, you have but 

two thousand pounds fortune, and not a 
shilling more ; — and you insist upon having 
three hundred pounds a year jointure for 

— "Because," replied my great-grandmo- 
ther, "you have little or no nose, Sir." 

Now, before I venture to make use of the 
word Nose a second time, — to avoid all con- 
fusion in what will be said upon it, in this 
interesting* part of my story, it may not be 
amiss to explain my own meaning, and 
define, with all possible exactness and pre- 
cision, what I would willingly be under- 
stood to mean by the term : being of opinion, 
that 'tis owing to the negligence and per- 
verseness of writers in despising this pre- 
caution, and to nothing else, — that all the 
polemical writings in divinity are not as 
clear and demonstrative as those upon a 
Will o' the Wisp, or any other sound part 
of philosophy and natural pursuit; in order 
to which, what have you to do, before you 
set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on 
to the day of judgment, — but to give the 
world a good definition, and stand to it, of 
the main word you have most occasion for, 
— changing it, Sir, as you would a guinea, 
into small coin, — which done, let the father 
of confusion puzzle you, if he can ; or put 
a different idea either into your head, or 
your reader's head, if he knows how. 

In books of strict morality and close rea- 
soning, such as this I am engaged in, — the 
neglect is unexcusable ; and heaven is wit- 
ness how the world has revenged itself 
upon me for leaving so many openings to 
equivocal strictures. — and for depending so 
much as J have done, all along, upon the 
cleanliness of rav readers' imaginations. — 



Here are two senses, cried Eugenius 

as we walk'd along, pointing with the fore* 
finger of his right hand to the word crevice, 
in the forty-eighth page of this book of books: 

here are two senses, — quoth he. — And 

here are two roads, replied I, turning ?hort 
upon him, — a dirty and a clean one, — which 

shall we take 1 The clean, by all means, 

replied Eugenius. Eugenius, said I, 

stepping before him, and laying my hand 
upon his breast, — to define is to distrust. — 
Thus I triumphed over Eugenius; but I 
triumphed over him, as I always do, like a 
fool. — 'Tis my comfort, however, I am not 
an obstinate one : therefore, 

I define a nose as follows, — entreating 
only beforehand, and beseeching my readers, 
both male and female, of what age, com- 
plexion, and condition soever, for the love 
of God and their own souls, to guard against 
the temptations and suggestions of the 
Devil, and suffer him by no art or wile to 
put any other ideas into their minds than 
what I put into my definition : — for by the 
word Nose, throughout all this long chapter 
of noses, and in every other part of my 
work where the word Nose occurs, — I de- 
clare by that word I mean a nose, and no- 
thing more or less. 



CHAP. XXXII. 

" Because," quoth my great-grand 

mother, repeating the words again* — " you 
"have little or no nose, Sir." 

S'death ! cried my great-grandfather 
clapping his hand upon his nose, — 't : s not 
so small as that comes to; — 'tis a full inch 
longer than my father's. Now, my great- 
grandfather's nose was for all the world like 
unto the noses of all the men, women, and 
children whom Pantagruel found dwelling 
upon the island of Ennasin. — By the way, 
if you would know the strange way of get- 
ting a-kin amongst so flat-nosed a people, 
you must read the book ; — find it out your- 
self you never can. 

— 'Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs. 

'Tis a full inch, continued my great- 
grandfather, pressing up the ridge of his 
nose with his finger and thumb ; and repeat- 
ing his assertion, — 'tis a full inch longer 



Madam, than my father's. You must 

mean your uncle's, replied my great-grand- 
mother. 

My great-grandfather was convinc- 
ed. — He untwisted the paper, and signed 
he article. 



CHAP. XXXIII. 

What an unconscionable jointure, 

my dear do we pay out of this small estate 
of ours ! quoth my grandmother to my grand- 
father. 

My father, replied my grandfather, had 
no more nose, my dear, saving the mark, 
than there is upon the back of my hand. 

Now, you must know, that my great-grand- 
mother outlived my grandfather twelve 
vears ; so that my father had the jointure 
to pay, a hundred and fifty pounds half- 
yearly — (on Michaelmas and Lady-day) — 
during all that time. 

No man discharged pecuniary obligations 
with a better grace than my father ; — and 
as far as a hundred pounds went, he would 
fling it upon the table, guinea by guinea, 
with that spirited jerk of an honest welcome, 
with which generous souls, and generous 
souls only, are able to fling down money : 
but as soon as ever he enter'd upon the odd 
fifty, — he generally gave a loud hem! rubb'd 



the side of his nose leisurely with the flat 
part of his fore-finger, — inserted his hand 
cautiously betwixt his head and the cawl of 
his wig, — look'd at both sides of every guinea 
as he parted with it, — and seldom could get 
to the end of the fifty pounds?, without pull- 
ing out his handkerchief, and wiping his 
temples. 

Defend me, gracious Heaven ! from those 
persecuting spirits who make no allowance 
for these workings within us. — Never, — O 
never may I lay down in their tents, who 
i annot relax the engine, and feel pity for 
the force of education, and the prevalence 
of opinions long derived from ancestors. 

For three generations at least, this tenet 
in favor of long noses had gradually been 
•-aking root in our family. — Tradition was 
itll along on its side, and Interest was 
every half-year stepping in to strengthen 
it; so that the whimsicality of my father's 
N 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 'J 7 

brain was so far from having the whole 
honor of this, as it had of almost all his 
other strange notions ; — for in a great meas- 
ure, he might have said to have suck'd this 
in with his mother's milk. He did his part, 
however. — If education planted the mistake 
(in case it was one) my father watered it, 
and ripened it to perfection. 

He would often declare, in speaking hia 
thoughts upon the subject, that he did not 
conceive how the greatest family in Eng- 
land could stand it out against an uninter- 
rupted succession of six or seven short 
noses. — And, for the contrary reason, he 
would generally add, That it must be one 
of the greatest problems in civil life, where 
the same number of long and jolly n<sps 
following one another in a direct line, did 
not raise and hoist it up into the best vacan- 
cies in the kingdom. — He would often boast 
that the Shandy Family rank'd very high 
in king Harry the VHIth's time; but owed 
its rise to no state engine, — he would say, 
— but to that only; — but that, like other 
families, he would add, — it had left the turn 
of the wheel, and had never recovered the 
blow of my great-grandfather's nose. — It 
was an ace of clubs indeed, he would cry, 
shaking his head : — and as vile a one for an 
unfortunate family as ever turn'd up trumps. 

Fair and softly, gentle reader ! — 

where is thy fancy carrying thee ! — If there 
is truth in man, by my great-grandfather's 
nose, I mean the external organ of smelling, 
or that part of man which stands prominent 
in his face, — and which, painters say, in 
good jolly noses and well-proportioned faces, 
should comprehend a full third ! — that is, 
measured downwards from the setting on 
of the hair. 

What a life of it has an author, a* 

this pass! 



CHAP. XXXIV. 

It is a singular blessing, that nature han 
form'd the mind of man with the same 
happy backwardness and renitency againsl 
conviction, which is observed in old dogs, 
— "of not learning new tricks." 

What a shuttlecock of ci fellow wouuj 
the greatest philosopher that ever exisnd 



US LIFE AND 

be ivhisk'd into at once, did he read such 
booKs, and observe such facts, and think 
such thoughts, as would eternally be making 
him change sides! 

Now, my father, as I told you last year, 
detested all this : — He pick'd up an opinion, 
Sir, as a man in a state of nature picks up 
an apple : — it becomes his own : — and if he 
is a man of spirit, he would lose his life 
rather than give it up. 

I am aware that Didius, the great civilian, 
will contest this point, and cry out against 
me, Whence comes this man's right to this 
apple? ex confesso, he will say, — things 
were in a state of nature ; — the apple is as 
much Frank's apple as John's. — Pray, Mr. 
Shandy, what patent has he to show for it] 
and how did it begin to be his? was it when 
he set his heart upon it ] or when he gath- 
ered it } or when he chew'd it ] or when 
he roasted it ] or when he peel'd, or when 
he brought it home ? or when he digested ? 

— or when he ? — For 'tis plain, Sir, if 

the first picking up of the apple, made it 
not his, — that no subsequent act could. 

Brother Didius, Tribonius will answer — 
(now Tribonius the civilian and church- 
lawyer's beard being three inches and a 
half, and three-eighths longer than Didius 
his beard, — I'm glad he takes up the cudgels 
for me: so I give myself no farther trouble 
about the answer.) — Brother Didius, Tri- 
bonius will say, it is a decreed case, as you 
may find it in the fragments of Gregorius 
and Hermogines's codes, and in all the 
codes from Justinian's down to the codes of 
Louis and Des Eaux, — that the sweat of a 
man's brows, and the exudations of a man's 
brains, are as much a man's own property 
as the breeches upon his backside ; — which 
said exudations, &c. being dropp'd upon 
the said apple by the labor of finding it, and 
picking it up ; and being moreover indisso- 
tnbly wasted, and as indissolubly annex'd, by 
the picker up, to the thing pick'd up, carried 
nome, roasted, peel'd, eaten, digested, and 
po on, — 'tis evident that the gatherer of the 
apple, in so doing, has mix'd up something 
which was his own, with the apple which 
was not his own ; by which means he has 
Acquired a property; — or, in other words, 
the apple is John's apple. 

By the same learned chain of reasoning, 
o\v ft' her stood up for all his opinions; he 



OPINIONS 

had spared no pains in picking them up 
and the more they lay out of the common 
way, the better still was his title. — No 
mortal claimed them; they had cost him. 
moreover, as much labor in cooking and di- 
gesting as in the case above ; so that they 
might well and truly be said to be of his ow n 
goods and chattels. — Accordingly he held 
fast by 'em,both by teeth and claws, — would 
fly to whatever he could lay his hands on, — 
and, in a word, would intrench and fortify 
them round with as many cireumvallations 
and breast-works as my uncle Toby would 
a citadel. 

There was one plaguy rub in the way 
of this : — the scarcity of materials to make 
any thing of a defence with, in case of a 
smart attack; inasmuch as few men of 
great genius had exercised their parts in 
writing books upon the subject of great 
noses. By the trotting of my lean horse, 
the thing is incredible! and I am quite 
lost in my understanding, when 1 am con- 
sidering what a treasure of precious time 
and talents together has been wasted upon 
worse objects, — and how many millions of 
books, in all languages, and in all possible 
types and bindings, have been fabricated on 
points not half so much tending to the unity 
and peace-making of the world! What was 
to be had, however, he set the greater store 
by ; and though my father would oft-times 
sport with my uncle Toby's libra ry, — which, 
by the bye, was ridiculous enough, — yet at 
the very same time he did it, he collected 
every book and treatise which had been 
systematically wrote upon noses, with as 
much care as my honest uncle Toby had 
done those upon military architecture. — 
'Tis true, a much less table would have held 
them ; — but that was not thy transgression, 
my dear uncle. — 

Here, but why here, — rather than in 

any other part of my story ?-- — I am not 

able to tell but here it is my 

heart stops me to pay to thee, my dear 
uncle Toby, once for all, the tribute I owe 
thy goodness. — Here let me thrust my chaii 
aside, and kneel down upon the ground 
whilst I am pouring forth the warmest sen- 
timent of love for thee, and veneration for 
the excellency of thy character, that ever 
virtue and nature kindled in a nephew's 
-Peace and comfort rest for ever- 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



99 



more upon tny head! — Thou enviedst no 
man's comforts, insultcdst no man's opin- 
ions ; — thou blackenedst no man's charac- 
ter,— devouredst no man's bread ! Gentle, 
with faithful Trim behind thee, didst thou 
amble round the little circle of pleasure, 
justling no creature in the way : for each 
one's sorrows thou hadst a tear ; — for each 
man's need thou hadst a shilling. 

Whilst I am worth one to pay a weeder, 
— thy path from the door to thy bowling- 
green shall never be grown up. — Whilst 
there is a rood and a half of land in the 
Shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear 
uncle Toby, shall never be demolish'd. 



CHAP. XXXV. 

My father's collection was not great ; but, 
to make amends, it was curious ; and con- 
sequently he was some time in making it ; 
he had the great good fortune, however, to 
set off well, in getting Bruscambille's pro- 
logue upon long noses, almost for nothing ; 
— for he gave no more for Bruscambille 
than three half-crowns, owing indeed to 
the strong fancy which the stall-man saw 
my father had for the book, the moment he 
laid his hands upon it. — There are not 
three Bruscambilles in Christendom, said 
the stall-man, except what are chain'd up 
in the libraries of the curious. My father 
flung down the money as quick as light- 
ning, — took Bruscambille into his bosom, 
— hied home from Piccadilly to Coleman- 
etreet with it, as he would have hied home 
with a treasure, without taking his hand 
once off from Bruscambille all the way. 

To those who do not yet know of which 
gender Bruscambille is, — inasmuch as a 
prologue upon long noses might easily be 
done by either, — 'twill be no objection 
against the simile — to say, That when my 
father got home, he solaced himself with 
Bruscambille after the manner in which, 
'tis ten to one, your Worship solaced your- 
self with your first mistress ! — that is, from 
morning even unto night: which, by the 
bye, how delightful soever it may prove to 
vhe enamorato, — is of little or no entertain- 
ment at all to by-standers. — Take notice, I 
go no farther with the simile ; — my father's 



eye was greater than his appetite, — his zeal 
greater than his knowledge, — he cool'd, — > 

his affections became divided ; he got 

hold of Prignitz, purchased Scroderus, An- 
drea Parous, Bouchet's Evening Confer- 
ences, and, above all, the great and learned 
Hafen Slawkenbergius; of which, as I shall 
have much to say by and by, — I will say 
nothing now. 



CHAP. XXXVI. 

Of all the tracts my father was at the 
pains to procure and study, in support of 
his hypothesis, there was not any one 
wherein he felt a more cruel disappoint- 
ment at first, than the celebrated Dialogue 
between Pamphagus and Codes, written 
by the chaste pen of the great and venera- 
ble Erasmus, upon the various uses and 

seasonable applications of long noses. 

Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this 
chapter, take advantage of any one spot of 
rising ground to get astride of your imagina- 
tion, if you can any ways help it ; or, if he 
is so nimble as to slip on, — let me beg of 
you, like an unback'd filly, to frisk it, to 
squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it 
— and to kick it, with long kicks, and short 
kicks, till, like Tickletoby's mare, you 
break a strap or a crupper, and throw his 
Worship into the dirt. — You need not kill 
him. — 

— And pray, who was Tickletoby's mare ! 
— 'Tis just as discreditable and unscholar- 
like a question, Sir, as to have asked, what 
year (ab urb. con.) the second Punic war 
broke out. — Who was Tickletoby's mare? 

Read, read, read, read, my unlearned 

reader! — read, — or, by the knowledge of 
the great Saint Paraleipomenon, — I tell you 
beforehand, you had better throw down the 
book at once; for without much reading, 
by which your Reverence knows I mean 
much knowledge, you will no more be able 
to penetrate the moral of the next marbled 
page (motley emblem of my work !) than 
the world with all its sagacity has been 
able to unravel the many opinions, trans- 
actions, and truths, which still .ie mys- 
tical ly hid under the dark veil of tb>; black 
one 



LIFE AND QVKFONP 



CHAP. XXXVII. 

" NIHIL me poenitet hujus nasi" quoth 
Pamphagus ; — that is, — " My nose has been 
the making of me." ''Nee est cur parti- 
te <u," replies Cocles; that is, "How the 
deuce should such a nose fail V* 

The doctrine, you see, was laid down by 
Erasmus, as my father wished it, with the 
utmost plainness; but my father's disap- 
pointment was, in finding nothing more 
from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; 
without any of that speculative subtilty or 
ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, 
which Heaven had bestow'd upon man, on 
purpose to investigate Truth, and fight for 
her on all sides. — My father pish'd and 

pugh'd at first most terribly. Tis worth 

something to have a good name. As the 
dialogue was of Erasmus, my father soon 
came to himself, and read it over and over 
itgain with great application, studying every 
word and every syllable of it, through and 
through, in its most strict and literal inter- 
pretation. — He could still make nothing of 
it, that way. Mayhap, there is more meant 
than is said in it, quoth my father. — Learned 
men, brother Toby, don't write dialogues 
upon long noses for nothing. — I'll study the 
mystic and the allegoric sense. — Here is 
some room to turn a man's self in, brother. 

My father read on, 

Now I find it needful to inform your 
Reverences and Worships, that besides the 
many nautical uses of long noses enumer- 
ated by Erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth, 
That a long nose is not without its domestic 
conveniences also ; for that, in case of dis- 
tress, — and for want of a pair of bellows, 
it will do excellently well, ad excitandum 
focum (to stir up the fire). 

Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to 
my father beyond measure, and had sown 
the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within 
him, as she had done the seeds of all other 
knowledge ; — so that he had got out his pen- 
knife, and was trying experiments upon the 
sentence, to see if he could not scratch some 
better sense into it. — I've got within a sin- 
gle letter, brother Toby, cried my father, 

of Erasmus his mystic meaning. You 

are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, 

in all conscience. Pshaw ! cried my 

father, .scratching on, — I might as well be 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

miles ofF- 



101 



seven miles on — I've done it, — said my 
father, snapping his fingers. See, my dear 
brother Toby, how I have mended the 
sense. — But you have marr'd a word, re- 
plied my uncle Toby. My father put o?i 

his spectacles, — bit his lip, — and tore out 
the leaf in a passion. 



CHAP. XXXVIII. 

O Slawkenbergius ! thou faithful analy- 
zer of my Disgrazias, — thou sad foreteller 
of so many of the whips and short turns 
which in one stage or other of my life have 
come slap upon me from the shortness of 
my nose, and no other cause that I am con- 
scious of, — tell me, Slawkenbergius ! what 
secret impulse was it? what intonation of 
voice? whence came it? — how did it sound 
in thy ears? — art thou sure thou heard'st 
it? — which first cried out to thee, — Go, — go, 
— Slawkenbergius ! dedicate the labors of 
thy life, — neglect thy pastimes, — call forth 
all the powers and faculties of thy nature, 
— macerate thyself in the service of man- 
kind ! and write a grand folio for them, 
upon the subject of their noses. 

How the communication was conveyed 
into Slawkenbergius's sensorium, — so that 
Slawkenbergius should know whose finger 
touch'd the key — and whose hand it was 
that blew the bellows, — as Hafen Slawken- 
bergius has been dead and laid in his grave 
above fourscore and ten years, — we can 
only raise conjectures. 

Slawkenbergius was play'd upon, for 
aught I know, like one of Whitfield's dis- 
ciples ; — that is, with such a distinct intelli- 
gence, Sir, of which of the two masters it 
was that had been practising upon his in- 
strument, — as to make all reasoning upon 
it needless. 

For in the account which Hafen 

Slawkenbergius gives the world of his mo- 
tives and occasions for writing, and spend- 
ing so many years of his life upon this one 
work, — towards the end of his prolego- 
mena; — which, by the bye, should have 
come first, — but the bookbinder \'»ns most 
injudiciously placed it betwixt the analyti- 
cal contents of the book and the tank itself; 
— he informs his reader, That ewr&jnce ue 
9* 



102 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



had arrived at the age of discernment, and jTartary, where they are all crushM down 
was able to sit down coolly, and consider by the thumb, so that no judgment can be 
within himself the true state and condition formed upon them, — are much nearer alike 
of man, and distinguish the main end and j than the world imagines; — the difference 
design of his being; — or, — to shorten my j amongst them being, he says, a mere trifle, 
translation, for Slawkenbergius's book is in 'not worth taking notice of; — but that the 
Latin, and not a little prolix in this pas- size and jollity of every individual nose, 
sage ; — ever since I understood, quoth Slaw- and by which one nose ranks above another, 
kenbergius, any thing, — or rather vjhat was and bears a higher price, is owing to the 
what, — and could perceive that the point t cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into 
of long noses had been too loosely handled [ whose ducts and sinuses the blood and ani- 
by all who had gone before, — have I, Slaw- mal spirits being impell'd and driven by the 
kenbergius, felt a strong impulse, with a warmth and force of the imagination, which 
mighty and unresistible call within me, to is but a step from it (bating the case of 
k r ird up myself to this undertaking. j idiots, whom Prignitz, who had lived many 

And to do justice to Slawkenbergius, he years in Turkey, supposes under the more 
has entered the list with a stronger lance, immediate tutelage of Heaven) — it so hap- 
and taken a much larger career in it, than pens, and ever must, says Prignitz, that the 
any one man who had ever entered it before excellency of the nose is in a direct arith- 
him : — and indeed, in many respects, de- metical proportion to the excellency of the 
serves to be en-nicKd as a prototype for all wearer's fancy. 

writers, of voluminous works at least, to j It is for the same reason ; that is, because 
model their book* by; — for he has taken in, 'tis all comprehended in Slawkenbergius, 

■ Sir, the whole subject, — examined every that I say nothing likewise of Scroderus 
part of it dialectic ally, — then brought it (Andrea) who, all the world knows, set 
into full day ; dilucidating it with all the himself to oppugn Prignitz with great vio- 
light which either the collision of his own lence; — proving it in his own way, first 

. natural parts could strike, — or the profound- logically, and then by a series of stubborn 
est knowledge of the sciences had empow- facts, " That so far was Prignitz from the 
ered him to cast upon it; — collating, collect- truth, in affirming that the fancy begat the 
ing, and compiling ; — begging, borrowing, nose, that, on the contrary, — the nose begai 
and stealing, as he went along, all that had the fancy." 

neen wrote or wrangled thereupon in the — The learned suspected Scroderus of an 
schools and porticoes of the learned ; so that indecent sophism in this ; — and Prignitz 
Slawkenbergius his book may properly be cried out aloud in the dispute, that Scrode- 
considered, not only as a model, — but asajrus had shifted the idea upon him; — but 
thorough-stitched digest and regular insti- : Scroderus went on maintaining his thesis. 



lute of noses, comprehending in it all that 

is or can be needful to 

them 

For this cause it is that I forbear to speak 
of so many (otherwise) valuable books and 
Treatises of my father's collecting, wrote 
either plump upon noses, — or collaterally 
touching them ; — such for instance as Prig- 
nitz, now lying upon the table before me, 



most candid and scholar-like examination 
«f above four thousand different skulls, in 
upwards of twentv charnel-houses in Silesia, 
which he had rummaged, — has informed us, 
that the mensuration ana configuration of 
the osseous or bony parts of human noses, 
■«u any given tract of country, except Crim 



My father was just balancing within 
be known about ! himself, which of the two sides he should 
take in this affair ; when Ambrose Parseus 
decided it in a moment, and, by overthrow- 
ing the systems both of Prignitz and Scro- 
derus, drove my father out of both sides of 
the controversy at once. 

Be witness, 

I don't acquaint the learned reader — in 
saying it, — I mention it only to show the 
learned, I know the fact myself, 

That this Ambrose Paraeus was chief sur- 
geon and nose-mender to Francis the Ninth 
of France ; and in high credit with him 
and the two preceding, or succeeding kings 
(I know not which) — and that, except in 
the slip he made in his story of Tt -acotius's 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

noses, and in his manner of setting them on, 
— he was esteemed by the whole college of 
physicians at that time, as more knowing 1 in 
matters of noses, than any one who had ever 
taken them in hand. 

Now, Ambrose Paras us convinced my 
father, that the true and efficient cause of 
what had engaged so much the attention of 
the world, and upon which Prignitz and 
Scroderus had wasted so much learning and 
tine parts, — was neither this nor that; — 
but that the length and goodness of the nose 
was owing simply to the softness and flac- 
cidity in the nurse's breast, — as the flatness 
and shortness of puisne noses was to the 
firmness and elastic repulsion of the same 
organ of nutrition in the hale and lively; — 
which, though happy for the woman, was the 
undoing of the child, inasmuch as his nose 
was so snubb'd, so rebuff'd, so rebated, and 
so refrigerated thereby, as never to arrive 
ad mensuram suam legitimam; — but that 
in case of the flaccidity and softness of the 
nurse or mother's breast — by sinking into 
it, quoth Paraus, as into so much butter, the 
nose was comforted, nourish'd, plump'd up, 
refresh'd, refocillated, and set a growing for 
ever. 

I have but two things to observe of Pa- 
rseus ; first, That he proves and explains all 
this with the utmost chastity and decorum 
of expression: — for which, may his soul for 
ever rest in peace ! 

And, secondly, That besides the systems 
of ; Prignitz and Scroderus, which Ambrose 
Paraeus his hypothesis effectually overthrew, 
— it overthrew at the same time the system 
of peace and harmony of our family ; and 
for three days together, not only embroiled 
matters between my father and my mother, 
but turn'd likewise the whole house and 
every thing in it, except my uncle Toby, 
quite upside down. 

Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute be- 
tween a man and his wife, never surely in 
any age or country, got vent through the 
key-hole of a street-door. 

My mother, you must know, but I 



103 

broke in (to-morrow morning) to my uncle 
Toby's fortifications, and eat up two rations 
and a half of dried grass, tearing up the 
sods with it, which faced his horn-work and 

covered way. Trim insists upon uemg 

tried by a court-martial, — the cow to he 
shot, — Slop to be crucifix' d y — myself to be 
Tristrairi'd, and at my very baptism made 
a martyr of; — poor unhappy Devils that we 
all are ! — I want swaddling : — but there is 
no time to be lost in exclamations, — I have 
left my father lying across his bed, my un- 
cle Toby in his old fringed chair, sitting be- 
side him, and promised I would go back to 
them in half an hour; and rive-and-thirty 
minutes are laps'd already. — Of all the 
perplexities a mortal author was ever seen 
in, — this certainly is the greatest; for I 
have Hafen Slawkenbergius's folio, Sir, to 
finish ; — a dialogue between my father and 
my uncle Toby, upon the solution of Prig- 
nitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Parreus, Panocra- 
tes, and Grangousier to relate ; — a tale out 
of Slawkenbergius to translate ; and all this 
in five minutes less than no time at all. — 
Such a head ! — would to Heaven my ene- 
mies only saw the inside of it. 



CHAP. XXXIX. 

There was not any one scene more e» 
tertaining in our family ; — and to do it jus- 
tice in this point, — I here put off my cap 
and lay it upon the table, close beside my 
ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration 
to the world concerning this one article 
the more solemn, — That I believe, in my 
soul (unless my love and partiality to my 
understanding blinds me) the hand of the 
Supreme Maker and First Designer cf all 
things, never made or put a family together 
(in that period at least of it which I have 
sat down to write the story of) — where the 
characters of it were castor contrasted with 
so dramatic a felicity as ours was, for this 



end : or in which the capacities of affording 
have fifty things more necessary to let you j such exquisite scenes, and the powers ol 
know first; — I have a hundred difficulties shifting them perpetually from morning to 
which I have promised to clear up, and a might, were lodged and intrusted with so 
thousand distresses and domestic misadven- j unlimited a confidence, as in the Shandv 
cures crowding in upon me thick and three- 1 Family, 
old, one upon the neck of another. A cow | Not any one of these was more divprtim; 



104 LIFE AND 

I say, in this whimsical theatre of ours, — 
than what frequently arose out of this self- 
same chapter of long noses, — especially 
when my father's imagination was heated 
with the inquiry, and nothing would serve 
him but to heat my uncle Toby's too. 

My uncle Toby would give my father all 
possible fair play in this attempt ; and with in- 
iinite patience would sit smoking his pipe for 
whole hours together, whilst my father was 
practising upon his head, and trying every 
accessible avenue to drive Prignitz and 
Seroderus's solutions into it. 

Whether they were above my uncle To- 
by's reason, — or contrary to it,— or that his 
brain was like damp tinder, and no spark 
could possibly take hold ; or that it was so 
full of saps, mines, blinds, curtains, and such 
military disqualifications to his seeing clearly 
into Prignitz and Scroderus's doctrines, — I 
say not ; — let schoolmen, — scullions, — anat- 
omists, and engineers, fight for it among 
themselves. 

'Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, 
in this affair, that my father had every word i 
of it to translate for the benefit of my uncle] 
Toby, and render out of Slawkenbergius's 
Latin, of which, as he was no great master, i 
his translation was not always of the purest, 
— and generally least so where 'twas mostj 
wanted. This naturally open'd a door to a \ 
second misfortune; — that in the warmer 
paroxysms of his zeal to open my uncle To- \ 
bv's eyes, — my father's ideas ran on as m uch I 
faster than the translation, as the translation 

outnioved my uncle Toby's neither the 

one or the other added much to the perspicu- 
ity of my father's lecture. 



CHAP. XL. 

The gift of ratiocination and making syl- 
logisms, — I mean in man, — for in superior 
c asses of beings, such as angels and spirits, 
— 'tis all done, may it please your Wor- 
ships, as they tell me, by intuition; — and 
oeings inferior, as your Worships all know, 
— c-yllogize by their noses ; though there is 
an island swimming in the sea (though not 
altogether at its ease) whose inhabitants, if 
u ly intelligence deceives me not, are so 
wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the 



OPINIONS 

same fashion, and oft-times to make very 

well out too : but that's neither here nor 

there : — 

The gift of doi ng it as it should be, amongst 
us, or, the great and principal act of ratioci- 
nation in man, as logicians tell us, is the 
finding out the agreement or disagreement 
of two ideas one with another, by the inter- 
vention of a third (called the medius termi- 
nus /) just as a man, as Locke well observes, 
by a yard, finds two men's nine-pin-alleys 
to be of the same length, which could not 
be brought together, to measure their equali- 
ty, by juxta-position. 

Had the same great reasoner looked on, as 
my father illustrated his systems of noses, 
and observed my uncle Toby's deportment, — 
what great attention he gave to every word ; 
— and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, 
with what wonderful seriousness he contem- 
plated the length of it ! — surveying it trans- 
versely as he held it betwixt his finger and 
his thumb ; — then fore-right, — then this way, 
and then that, in all its possible directions 
and fore-shortenings, — he would have con- 
cluded my uncle Toby had got hold of the 
medius terminus, and was syllogizing and 
measuring with it the truth of each hypothe- 
sis of long noses, in order, as my father laid 
them before him. This, by the bye, was 
more than my father wanted : — his aim in all 
the pains he was at in these philosophic lec- 
tures, — was to enable my uncle Toby not 
to discuss, — but comprehend ; — to hold the 
grains and scruples of learning, — not to 

weigh them. My uncle Toby, as you 

will read in the next chapter, did neither 
the one or the other. 



CHAP. XLI. 

'Tis a pity, cried my father, one winter's 
night after a three hours' painful translation 
of Slawkenbergius, — 'tis a pity, cried my 
father, putting my mother's thread-paper 
into the book for a mark as he spoke, — that 
Truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up 
in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so 
obstinate as not to surrender herself up some- 
times upon the closest siege. — 

Now it happened then, as indeed it had 
often done before, that my uncle Toby's fan- 
cy, during the time of my father's expiana* 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



105 



. ion of Prignitz to him, — having nothing to 
stay it thrre, had taken a short flight to the 
bowling-green: — his body might as well 
have taken a turn there too: — so that with 
all the semblance of a deep school-man in- 
.ient upon the mcdius terminus, — my uncle 
Toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole 
lecture, and all its pro's and con's, as if my 
father had been translating Hafen Slawken- 
bergius from the Latin tongue into the 
Cherokee. But the word siege, like a talis- 
manic power, in my father's metaphor, waft- 
ing back my uncle Toby's fancy, quick as 
a note could follow the touch, — he open'd 
his ears ; — and my father observing that he 
took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled 
his chair nearer the table, as with a desire 
to profit, — my father with great pleasure be- 
gan his sentence again, changing only the 
plan, and dropping the metaphor of the 
siege in it, to keep clear of some dangers 
my father apprehended from it. 

'Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can 
only be on one side, brother Toby, — con- 
sidering what ingenuity these learned men 
have all shown in their solutions of noses. 

■ Can noses be dissolved] replied my 

uncle Toby. 

— My father thrust back his chair, rose 
up, — put on his hat, — took four long strides 
to the door, — jerked it open, — thrust his 
head half-way out, — shut the door again, — 
took no notice of the bad hinge, — returned 
to the table, — pluck'd my mother's thread - 
paper out of Slawkenbergius's book, — went 
hastily to his bureau, — walked slowly back, 
— twisted my mother's thread-paper about 
his thumb, — unbutton'd his waistcoat, — 
threw my mother's thread-paper into the fire, 
— bit her satin pin-cushion in two, — fill'd 
his mouth with bran, — confounded it: — but 
mark ! — the oath of confusion was levell'd 
at my uncle Toby's brain, — which was e'en 
confused enough already ; — the curse came 
charged only with the bran — the bran, may 
it please your Honors, was no more than 
powder to the ball. 

'Twas well my father's passions lasted 



off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected 
strokes his science met with from the quaint 
simplicity of my uncle Toby's questions. 

Had ten dozen of hornets stung him 

behind in so many different places all at 
one time, — he could not have exerted more 
mechanical functions in fewer seconds, — 
or started half so much, as with one single 
qucere of three words unseasonably popping 
in full upon him in his hobby-horsical career. 

'Twas all one to my uncle Toby; — he 
smoked his pipe on with unvaried compo- 
sure; his heart never intended offence to 
his brother ; — and as his head could seldom 
find out where the sting of it lay, — he al- 
ways gave my father the credit of cooling 

by himself. He was five minutes and 

thirty-five seconds about it in the present 
case. 

By all that's good ! said my father, swear- 
ing, as he came to himself, and taking the 
oath out of Ernulphus's digest of curses — 
(though, to do my father justice, it was n 
fault, as he told Dr. Slop in the affair of 
Ernulphus, which he as seldom committed 

as any man upon earth,) By all that's 

good and great ! brother Toby, said mv 
father, if it was not for the aids of ohiloso- 
phy, which befriend one so much ^s they 
do, — you would put a man beside all temper. 
— Why, by the solutions of noses, of which 
I was telling you, I meant, as you might 
have known, had you favored me with one 
grain of attention, the various accounts, 
which learned men of different kinds of 
knowledge have given the world of the 

causes of short and long noses. There 

is no cause but one, replied my uncle Toby, 
— why one man's nose is longer than an- 
other's, out because that God pleases to 
have it so.- That is Grangousier's solu- 
tion, said my father. 'Tis he, continued 

my uncle Toby looking up, and not regard- 
ing my father's interruption, who makes 
us all, and frames and puts us together in 
such forms and proportions, and for such 
ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom. 
— 'Tis a pious account, cried my father, but 



aot long; for so long as they did last, they .not philosophical; — there is more religion 
ied him a busy life on't; and it is one of in it tl an sound science. 'Twas no incon- 
the most unaccountable problems that ever sistent part of my uncle Toby's character 
1 met with in my observations of human — that he feared God, and reverenced re- 
nature, that nothing should prove my father's ligion. — So the moment my father finished 
tiettle so much, or make his passions go his remark, — my uncle Toby fell a whis- 
O 



106 LIFE AND OPINIONS 

tling Lillibullero with more zeal (though 
more out of tune) than usual. — 

What is become of my wife's thread- 
i 



paoer 



CHAP. XLII. 



No matter ; — as an appendage to seam- 
stressy, the thread-paper might be of some 
consequence to my mother; — of none to 
my father as a mark in Slawkenbergius. — 
Slawkenbergius, in every page of him, was 
a rich treasure of inexhaustible knowledge 
to my father ; — he could not open him amiss; 
and he would often say in closing the book, 
That if all the arts and sciences in the world, 
with the books which treated of them, were 
lost, — should the wisdom and policies of 
governments, he would say, through disuse, 
ever happen to be forgot ; and all that 
statesmen had wrote or caused to be written, 
upon the strong or the weak sides of courts 
and kingdoms, should they be forgot also, 
—and Slawkenbergius only left, — there 
would be enough in him in all conscience, 
he would say, to set the world a-going again. 
A treasure, therefore, was he indeed ! an 
institute of all that was necessary to be 
known of noses, and every thing else : — at 
matin, noon, and vespers, was Hafen Slaw- 
kenbergius his recreation and delight: 'twas 
for ever in his hands :• —you would have 



sworn, Sir, it had been a canon's prayei 

book : — so worn, so glazed, so contrited and 

attrited was it with fingers and with thumbs 

in all its parts, from one end even unto the 

other. 

I am not such a bigot to Slawkenbergius # 

as my father: there is a fund in him, 

no doubt! but in my opinion, the best, 1 
don't say the most profitable, but the most 
amusing part of Hafen Slawkenbergius is 
his Tales ; — and considering he was a 
German, many of them told not without 
fancy. 

These take up his second book, containing 
nearly one half of his folio, and are compre- 
hended in ten decades; each decade con- 
taining ten tales. — Philosophy is not built 
upon tales: and therefore 'twas certainly 
wrong in Slawkenbergius to send them into 
the world by that name ! — there are a few 
of them in his eighth, ninth, and tenth de- 
cades, which, I own, seem rather playful 
and sportive than speculative ; — but, in 
general, they are to be looked upon by the 
learned as a detail of so many independent 
facts, all of them turning round, somehow 
or other, upon the main hinges of his subject, 
and collected by him with great fidelity 
and added to his work as so many illustra- 
tions upon the doctrines of noses. 

As we have leisure enough upon oui 
hands, — if you give me leave, Madam, I'll 
tell you the ninth tale of his tenth decade 



THE 

LIFE AND OPINIONS 

OF 

Srf0ttr*m Stiautrg, 

GENTLEMAN. 



SLAWKENBERGII FABELLA.* 
Vespera qimdam frigidula, posteriori in 
parte mensis Augusti, peregrinus, mulo 
fusco colore incidens, mantica a tergo, paucis 
indusiis, binis calceis, braccisque sericis 
coccineis repleta, Argentoratum ingressus 
est. 



Militi eurn percontanti, quum portus in- 
traret dixit, se apud Nasorum Promontorium 
fuisse, Fraucofurtum proficisci, et Argen- 
toratum, transitu ad fines Sarmatiae mensis 
inter llo, reversurum. 

Miles peregnni in faciem suspexit : 

ly? boni, nova forma nasi ! 

At multum mihi profuit, inquit peregrinus, 
carpum amento extrahens, e quo pependit 
acinaces: Loculo manum inseruit; et magna 
cum urbanitate, pilei parte anteriore tacta. 
manu sinistra, ut extendit dextram, militi 
florinum dedit et processit 



Dolet mihi, ait miles, tympanistam manum 
et valgum alloquens, virum adeo urbanum 
raginam perdidisse : itineravi haud poterit 
nuda acinaci : neque vaginam toto Argen- 
torato, habilern inveniet. — — Nullam un- 
quam habui, respondit peregrinus respiciens 

seque comiter inclinans — hoc more 

gesto, nudam acinacem elevans, mulo lente 
»»rogrediente, ut nasum tueri possim. 



* A3 Hafen Slawkenbergiusde Nasis is extremely 
#earce, it may not be unacceptable to the learned 
reader to see the specimen of a few pages of his origi- 
nal , I will make no reflection upon it, but that his 



SLAWKENBERGIUS'S TALE. 

It was one cool, refreshing evening at 
the close of a very sultry day, in the latter 
end of the month of August, when a stran- 
ger, mounted upon a dark mule, with a 
small cloak-bag behind him, containing a 
few shirts, a pair of shoes, and a crimson- 
satin pair of breeches, entered the town of 
Strasburg. 

He told the sentinel, who questioned him 
as he entered the gates, that he had been 
at the Promontory of Noses, — was going 
on to Frankfort, — and should be back again 
at Strasburg that day month, in his way 
to the borders of Crim Tartary. 

The sentinel looked up into the stranger's 

face : he never saw such a Nose in his 

life ! 

— I have made a very good venture of it, 
quoth the stranger ; — so slipping his wrist 
out of the loop of a black ribbon, to which 
a short scimitar was hung, he put his hand 
into his pocket, and with great courtesy 
touching the fore-part of his cap with his 
left hand, as he extended his right, — he put 
a florin into the sentinel's hand, and passed 
on. 

It grieves me, said the sentinel, speaking 
to a little dwarfish bandy-legg'd drummer, 
that so courteous a soul should have lost 
his scabbard; — he cannot travel without 
one to his scimitar; and will not be able to 

get a scabbard to fit it in all Strasburg. 

I never had one, replied the stranger, look- 
ing back to the sentinel, and putting his 
hand up to his cap as he spoke. — I carry it, 
continued he, thus : — holding up his naned 



story-telling Latin is much more concise than hi* 
philosophic, — and, I think, has more of hatimtv in . 



103 



Ncn irnmerito, benigne peregrine, res- 
pondit mixes. 

Nihili eestimo, ait ille tympanista, e per- 
gamena factitius est. 

Prout christianus sum, inquit miles, nasus 
ille, ni sexties major sit, meo esset con- 
formis. 

Crepitare audivi, ait tympanista. 

Mehercule ! sanguinam emisit, respondit 
miles. 

Miseret me, inquit tympanista, qui non 
ambo tetigimus ! 

Eodem temporis puncto, quo ha?c res 
irgumentata fuit inter militem et tympan- 
istam, disceptabatur ibidem tubicine et uxore 
sua, qui tunc accesserunt, et peregrino prae- 
tereunte, restiterunt. 

Quantum nasus ! seque longus est, ait tu- 
oicina, ac tuba. 

Et ex eodem metallo, ait tubicen, velut 
Bternutamento audias. 

Tantum abest, respondit ilia, quod fistu- 
la m dulcedine vincit. 

vEneus est, ait tubicen. 

Nequaquam, respondit uxor. 

Rursum affirmo, ait tubicen, quod seneus 
est 

Rem penitus explorabo; prius, enimdigito 
tangam, ait uxor, quam dormivero. 

Mulus peregrini gradu lento progressus 
est, ut unumquodque verbum controversise, 
non tantum inter militem et tympanistam, 
verum etiam inter tubicinem et uxorem 
ejus, audiret. 

Nequaquam, ait ille, in muli collum freena 
demittens, et manibus ambabus in pectus 
positis (mulo lente progrediente) nequa- 
quam, ait ille respiciens, non necesse est ut 
res isthaec dilucidata foret. Minime gen- 
tium ! meus nasus nunquam tangetur, dum 
FPiritus hos reget artus — Ad quid agendum 1 
ait uxor burgomagistri 



Heregrmus ilh non respondit. Votum 
far icbat. tunc temporis sancto Nicolao : quo 
*a-;to. in sinum dextrum mserens, e qua 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

scimitar, his mule moving on slowly all the 
time, — on purpose to defend my nose. 

It is well worth it, gentle stranger, re- 
plied the sentinel. 

'Tis not worth a single stiver, said 

the bandy-legg'd drummer : 'tis a nosp 

of parchment. 

As I am a true Catholic, — except that it 
is six times as big, — 'tis a nose, said the 
sentinel, like my own. 

— I heard it crackle, said the drummer. 

By dunder, said the sentinel, I saw it 
bleed. 

What a pity, cried the bandy-legg'd 
drummer, we did not both touch it ! 

At the very time that this dispute was 
maintaining by the sentinel and the drum- 
mer — was the same point debating betwixt 
a trumpeter and a trumpeter's wife, who 
were just then coming up, and had stopp'd 
to see the stranger pass by. 

Benedicity ! What a nose ! — 'tis as 

long, said the trumpeter's wife, as a trum 
pet. 

And of the same metal, said the trum- 
peter, as you hear by its sneezing. 

'Tis as soft as a flute, said she. 



— 'Tis brass, said the trumpeter. 

— 'Tis a pudding's end, said his wife. 

I tell thee again, said the trumpeter, 'tis 
a brazen nose. 

I'll know the bottom of it, said the trum 
peter's wife, for I will touch it with my 
finger before I sleep. 

The stranger's mule moved on at so slow 
a rate, that he heard every word of the 
dispute, not only betwixt the sentinel and 
the drummer, but betwixt the trumpeter 
and the trumpeter's wife. 

No ! said he, dropping his reins upon his 
mule's neck, and laying both his hands upon 
his breast, the one over the other in a saint- 
like position (his mule going on easily al. 
the time) No ! said he, looking up, — I am 
not such a debtor to the world, — slandered 
and disappointed as I have been, — as to 

give it that conviction : no ! said he, my 

nose shall never be touched whilst Heaven 

gives me strength To do wl at? said a 

burgomaster's wife. 

The stranger took no notice of the burgo 
master's wife ; — he was making a vow to 
Saint Nicholas; which done, haviny un 






OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



10t 



noffligentcr pependit acinaces, lento gradu 
processit per plateani Argentorati latam 
quse ad diversorium templo ex adversum 
ducit. 



Peregrinus mulo descendens stabulo in- 
cludi, et manticam inferri jussit; qua aperta 
et coccineis sericis femorabilis extractis 
cum argento laciniato ncpi^oixavrt, his sese 
induit, statimque, acinaci in inanu, ad forum 
deambulavit. 



Quod ubi peregrinus esset ingressus, uxo- 
rem tubicinis obviam euntem aspicit; illico 
cursum flectit, metuens ne nasus suus ex- 
ploraretur, atque ad diversorium, regressus 
est — exuit se vestibus; braccas coccineas 
sericas manticss imposuit mulumque educi 
jussit. 

Francofurtuni proficiscor, ait ille, et Ar- 
gentoratem quatuor abhinc hebdomadis re- 
vertar. 

Bene curasti hoc jumentum 1 (ait) muli 
faciem manu demulcens — me, mantieam- 
que meam, plus sexcentis mille passibus 
Dortavit. 



Longa via est! respondit hospes, nisi 
plurimum esset negotii. — Enimvero, ait 
Deregrinus, a Nasorum Promontorio redivi, 
■it nasum speciosissimum, egregiosissim uni- 
que quern unquam quisquam sortitus est, 
acquisivi. 

Dum peregrinus hanc miram rationem 
de seipso reddit, hospes et uxor ejus, oculis 
intentis, peregrini nasum contemplantur 

Per sanctos sanctasque omnes, ait hos- 

pitis uxor, nasis duodecim maximis in toto 
Argentorato major est ! — estne, ait ilia mariti 
in aurem insusurrans, nonne est nasus pra> 
£randis ] 



crossed his arms with the same solemnity 
with which he crossed them, he took up 
the reins of his bridle with his left hand,, 
and putting his right hand into his boson 
with his scimitar hanging loosely to the 
wrist of it, he rode on, as slowly as one foot 
of the mule could follow another, through 
the principal streets of Strasburg, till chance 
brought him to the great inn in the market- 
place, over-against the church. 

The moment the stranger alighted, he 
ordered his mule to be led into the stable, 
and his cloak-bag to be brought in ; then 
opening, and taking out of it his crimson- 
satin breeches, with a silver-fringed — (ap- 
pendage to them, which I dare not trans- 
late) — he put his breeches, with his fringed 
cod-piece on, and forthwith, with his short 
scimitar in his hand, walked out to the 
grand parade. 

The stranger had just taken three turn.3 
upon the parade, when he perceived th«» 
trumpeter's wife at the opposite side of it; 
— so turning short, in pain lest his nose 
should be attempted, he instantly went 
back to his inn, — undressed himself, packed 
up his crimson-satin breeches, &c. in his 
cloak-bag, and called for his mule. 

I am going forwards, said the stranger, 
for Frankfort — and shall be back at Stras- 
burg this day month. 

I hope, continued the stranger, stroking 
down the face of his mule with his left 
hand as he was going to mount it, that you 
have been kind to this faithful slave of 
mine : — it has carried me and my cloak- 
bag, continued he, tapping the mule's back, 
above six hundred leagues. 

'Tis a long journey, Sir, replied the 

master of the inn, — unless a man has great 

business. Tut ! tut ! said the stranger, 

I have been at the Promontory of Noses ; 
and have got me one of the goodliest and 
jolliest, thank Heaven, that ever fell to a 
single man's lot. 

Whilst the stranger was giving this odd 
account of himself, the master of the inn 
and his wife kept both their eyes fixed full 

upon the stranger's nose. By Saint Ra- 

dagunda, said the inn-keeper's wife to her- 
self, there is more of it than ill any dozen 
of the largest noses put together in all 
Strasburg ! Is it not, said sbe, whispering 



10 



no 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



Dolus inest, anime mi, ait hospes — nasus 
est falsi?. 

Verus est, respond it uxor. 

Ex abiete factus est, ait ille, terebinthi- 
*um olet. — 

Carbuuculus inest, ait uxor. 

Mortuus est nasus, respondit hospes. 

Vivus est, ait ilia, — et si ipsa vivam, tan- 
gam. 

Votum feci sancto Nicolao, ait peregri- 
nus, nasum m'eum intactum fore usque ad 
— Quodnam tempus? illico respondit ilia. 



Minime tangetur, inquit ille (manibus in 
pectus compositis) usque ad illam horam 

Quam horam ? ait ilia Nullam, res- 

Dondit peregrinus, donee pervenio ad — 
Quern locum, — obsecro? ait ilia Pere- 
grinus nil respondens mulo conscenso dis- 
cessit. 



her husband in his ear, is it not a noble 
nose? 

'Tis an imposture, my dear, said the mas- 
ter of the inn ; — -'tis a false nose. 

'Tis a true nose, said his wife. 

'Tis made of fir-tree, said he ; I smoll 
the turpentine. 

There's a pimple on it, said she. 

'Tis a dead nose, replied the inn-keeper. 

'Tis a live nose ; and if I am alive my- 
self, said the inn-keeper's wife, I will 
touch it. 

I have made a vow to St. Nicholas this 
day, said the stranger, that my nose shall 

not be touched till . Here the stranger, 

suspending his voice, looked up. Till 

when? said she hastily. 

It never shall be touched, said he, clasp- 
ing his hands and bringing them close to 

his breast, till that hour What hour ? 

cried the inn-keeper's wife* Never! — 

never! said the stranger, never till I am 

got For Heaven's sake, into what place? 

said she. The stranger rode away 

without saying a word. 

The stranger had not got half a league 
on his way towards Frankfort, before all the 
city of Strasburg was in an uproar about 
his nose. The Compline bells were just 
ringing, to call the Strasburgers to their de- 
votions, and shut up the duties of the day 
in prayer; — no soul in all Strasburg heard 
'em, — the city was like a swarm of bees, — 
men, women, and children, (the Compline 
bells tinkling all the time) flying here and 
there, — in at one door and out at another, — 
this way and that way, — long ways and 
cross ways, — up one street, down another 
street, — in at this alley, out at that; did 
you see it? did you see it? did you see it? 

O ! did you see it ? who saw it i who 

did see it ? for mercy's sake, who saw it ? 

Alack-a-day ! I was at vespers ! — I was 
washing, I was starching, I was scouring, 

I was quilting. God help me ! I never 

saw it — I never touch'd it ! — would I had 
been a sentinel, a bandy-legg'd drummer, a 
trumpeter, a trumpeter's wife, was the gen- 
eral cry and lamentation in every street 
and corner of Strasburg. 

Whilst all this confusion- and disorder 
triumphed throughout the great city (f 
Strasburg, was the courteous sl> anger going 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



in 



on as gently upon his muie, in his way to [many noses of different cuts and fashions, 
Frankfort, as if he had no concern at all in I as there were heads in Strasburg to hold 



the affair, talking all the way he rode 

in broken sentences, sometimes to his mule, 
—sometimes to himself, — sometimes to his 

Julia. 

O Julia, my lovely Julia ; — nay, I cannot 

slop to let thee bite that thistle : — that ever 

tne suspected tongue of a rival should have 

robbed me of enjoyment when I was upon 

the point of tasting it ! 

Pugh ! — 'tis nothing but a thistle — 

never mind it; — thou shalt have a better 

supper at night. 

Banish'd from my country, — my 

friends, — from thee. 

Poor devil, thou'rt sadly tired with thy 

journey ! Come, get on a little faster, 

— there's nothing in my cloak-bag but two 

6hirts, — a crimson-satin pair of breeches, — 

and a fringed Dear Julia ! 

But why to Frankfort?— is it that 

there is a hand unfelt, which secretly is 

conducting me through these meanders and 

unsuspected tracts I 

Stumbling! by Saint Nicholas, every 

step! — Why, at this rate, we shall be all 

night in getting in 

To happiness; — or am I to be the 

sport of fortune and slander? — destined to 

be driven forth unconvicted, unheard, 

untouch'd ; — if so, why did I not stay at 

Strasburg, where justice — but I had sworn ! 
Come, thou shalt drink — to St. Nicholas — 

O Julia ! What dost thou prick up thy 

ears at? — 'tis nothing but a man, &c. 

The stranger rode on communing in this 
manner with his mule and Julia, — till he 
arrived at his inn, where, as soon as he ar- 
rived, he alighted ; — saw his mule, as he 
nad promised it, taken good care of, — took 
off his cloak-bag, with his crimson-satin 
breeches, &c. in it; — called for an omelet 
for his supper, went to his bed about twelve 
o'clock, and in five minutes fell fast asleep. 
It was about the same hour when the 
uimult in Strasburg being abated for that 
night, — the Strasburgers had all got quietly 
into their beds, — but not like the stranger, 
for the rest either of their minds or bodies: 
Queen Mab, like an elf as she was, had 
taken the strang^'s nose, and, without re- 
duction of its bulk, had that night been at 
«iie pains of slitting and dividing it into as 



them. The abbess of Qucdlingberg, who, 
with the four great dignitaries of her chap- 
ter, the prioress, the deaness, the sub- 
chantrcss, and senior-canoness, had that 
week come to Strasburg, to consult the 
university upon a case of conscience relating 
to their placket-holes, — was ill all the night. 

The courteous stranger's nose had got 
perched upon the top of the pineal gland of 
her brain, and made such rousing work in 
the fancies of the four great dignitaries of 
her chapter, they could not get a wink of 
sleep the whole night through for it; — 
there was no keeping a limb still amongst 
them : — in short, they got up like so many- 
ghosts. 

The penitentiaries of the third order of 
Saint Francis, — the nuns of Mount Calvary, 
— the Praemonstratenses, — the Clunienses*, 
— the Carthusians, — and all the severer or- 
ders of nuns who lay that night in blankets 
or hair-cloth, were still in a worse condition 
than the abbess of Quedlingberg ; — by tum- 
bling and tossing, and tossing and tumbling 
from one side of their beds to the other, the 
whole night long ; — the several sisterhoods 
had scratch'd and maul'd themselves all to 
death ; — they got out of their beds a^ost 
flay'd alive ; — every body thought Saint 
Anthony had visited them for probation 
with his fire; — they had never once, in 
short, shut their eyes the whole nigh* long 
from vespers to matins. 

The nuns of Saint Ursula acted the 
wisest ; — they never attempted to go to bed 
at all. 

The dean of Strasburg, the prebendaries, 
the capitulars and domiciliars (capitularly 
assembled in the morning to consider the 
case of butter'd buns) all wished they had 
followed the nuns of Saint Ursula's ex- 
ample. 

In the hurry and confusion every thing 
had been in the night before, the bakers had 
all forgot to lay their leaven, — there were 
no butter'd buns to be had for breakfast in 
all Strasburg: — the whole close of the 
cathedral was in one eternal commotion : — 



* Hafen Slawkenbergius means the Benedictine 
nuns of Cluny, founded in the year ( J40, by Odo, abb* 
de Cluny. 



112 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



such a cause of restlessness and disquietude, 
and such a zealous inquiry into the cause 
of that restlessness, had never happened in 
Strasburg, since Martin Luther, with his 
doctrines, had turned the city upside down. 
If the stranger's nose took this liberty of 
Jirusting himself thus into the dishes* of 
religious orders, &c. what a carnival did 
his nose make of it in those of the laity ! — 
'tis more than my pen, worn to the stump 
as it is, has power to describe; though, I 
acknowledge, (cries Slawkenbergius, with 
more gaiety of thought than I could have 
expected from him) that there is many a 
good simile now subsisting in the world 
which might give my countrymen some 
idea of it ; but at the close of such a folio as 
this, wrote for their sakes, and in which I 
have spent the greatest part of my life, — 
though I own to them the simile is in being, 
yet would it not be unreasonable in them to 
expect I should have either time or inclina- 
tion to search for it 1 Let it suffice to say, 
that the riot and disorder it occasioned in 
the Strasburgers' fantasies was so general, 
— such an overpowering mastership had it 
got of all the faculties of the Strasburgers 1 
minds, — so many strange things, with equal 
confidence on all sides, and with equal 
eloquence in all places, were spoken and 
sworn to concerning it, that turned the 
whole stream of all discourse and wonder 
towards it ; every soul, good and bad, — rich 
and poor, — learned and unlearned, — doctor 
and student, — mistress and maid, — gentle 
and simple, — nun's flesh and woman's flesh, 
in Strasburg, spent their time in hearing 
tidings about it ; — every eye in Strasburg 
languished to see it; — every finger, — every 
thumb in Strasburg, — burned to touch it. 
Now what might add, if any thing may 
3 thought necessary to add, to so vehement 
a desire, was this, — that the sentinel, the 
bandy-legg'd drummer, the trumpeter, the 
trumpeter's wife, the burgomaster's widow, 
die master of the inn, and the master of the 
inn's wife, how widely soever they all dif- 
fered every one from another in their testi- 



* Mr. Shandy's compliments to orators,— is very 
sensible *hat Slawkenbergius has here changed his 
metaphor, — which he is very guilty of; — that, as a 
translator, Mr. Shandy has all along done what he 
could to make him stick to it, — bu that here 'twas 
inipOfSiblp 



monies and descriptions of the stranger's 
nose, — they all agreed together in two 
points, — namely, that he was gone to Frank- 
fort, and would not return to Strasburg till 
that day month ; and secondly, whether his 
nose was true or false, that the strange; 
himself was one of the most perfect para- 
gons of beauty, — the finest made man, — 
the most genteel! — the most genercus of 
his purse, — the most courteous in his car- 
riage, that had ever entered the gates of 
Strasburg ; — that as he rode, with his scimi- 
tar slung loosely to his wrist, through the 
streets, — and walked with his crimson-satin 
breeches across the parade, — 'twas with so 
sweet an air of careless modesty, and so 
manly withal, — as would have put the 
heart in jeopardy (had his nose not stood in 
his way) of every virgin who had cast her 
eyes upon him. 

I call not upon that heart which is a 
stranger to the throbs and yearnings of cu- 
riosity, so excited, to justify the abbess of 
Quedlingberg, the prioress, the deaness, 
and sub-chantress, for sending at noon-day 
for the trumpeter's wife : she went through 
the streets of Strasburg with her husband's 
trumpet in her hand, — the best apparatus 
the straitness of the time would allow her, 
for the illustration of her theory, — she staid 
no longer than three days. 

The sentinel and the bandy-legg'd drum- 
mer ! — nothing on this side of old Athens 
could equal them ! they read their lectures 
under the city-gates to comers and goers, 
with all the pomp of a Chrysippus and a 
Crantor in their porticoes. 

The master of the inn, with his ostler on 
his left hand, read his also in the same 
style, — under the portico or gateway of his 
stable-yard ; — his wife, hers more privately 
in a back room. All flocked to their lec- 
tures; not promiscuously, — but to this or 
that, as is ever the way, as faith and credu- 
lity marshall'd them. In a word, each Stras- 
burger came crowding for intelligence; — 
and every Strasburger had the intelligence 
he wanted. 

'Tis worth remarking, for the benefit of 
all demonstrators in natural philosophy, &c. 
that as soon as the trumpeter's wife had 
finished the abbess of Quedlingberg's pri- 
vate lecture, and had begun to read in pub- 
lic, which she did upon a stool in tne middle 



! 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



113 



of the great parade, — she incommoded the 
other demonstrators mainly, by gaining in- 
continently the most fashionable part of the 

city of Strosbarg for her auditory. But 

when a demonstrator in philosophy (cries 
Slawkenbergius) has a trumpet for an ap- 
paratus, pray what rival in science can 
pretend to be heard besides him 1 

Whilst the unlearned, through these con- 
duits of intelligence, were all busied in 
getting down to the bottom of the well, 

where Truth keeps her little court, 

were the learned in their way as busy in 
pumping her up through the conduits of 
dialect induction ; — they concerned them- 
selves not with facts, — they reasoned. 

Not one profession had thrown more light 
upon this subject than the Faculty, — had 
not all their disputes about it run into the 
affair of wens and oedematous swellings, 
they could not keep clear of them for their 
bloods and souls. — The stranger's nose had 
nothing to do either with wens or oedema- 
tous swellings. 

It was demonstrated, however, very satis- 
factorily, that such a ponderous mass of 
heterogeneous matter could not be con- 
gested and conglomerated to the nose, 
whilst the infant was in utero, without de- 
stroying the statical balance of the fcetus, 
and throwing it plump upon its head nine 
months before the time.-— 

The opponents granted the theory; 

— they denied the consequences. 

And if a suitable provision of veins, arte- 
ries, &c. said they, was not laid in, for the 
due nourishment of such a nose, in the very 
first, stamina and rudiments of its formation, 
before it came into the world (bating the 
case of wens), it could not regularly grow 
and be sustained afterwards. 

This was all answered by a dissertation 
upon nutriment, and the effect which nu- 
triment had in extending the vessels ; and 
111 the increase and prolongation of the 
muscular parts of the greatest growth and 
expansion imaginable. — In the triumph of 
which theory, they went so far as to affirm, 
That there was no cause in nature why a 
nose should not grow to the size of the man 
himself. 

The respondents satisfied the world this 
event could never happen to them so long 
as a man had but one stomach and one pair 



of lungs : — for the stomach, said they, being 
the only organ destined for the reception 
of food, and turning it into chyle, and th* 
lungs the only engine of sanguification,— 
it could possibly work off no more thar 
what the appetite brought it: or, admitting 
the possibility of a man's overloading his 
stomach, nature had set bounds however to 
his lungs, — the engine was of a determined 
size and strength, and could elaborate but. 
a certain quantity in a given time ; — thai 
is, it could produce just as much blood as 
was sufficient for one single man, and no 
more ; so that, if there was as much nose 
as man, — they proved a mortification must 
necessarily ensue; and forasmuch as there 
could not be a support for both, that the 
nose must either fall off from the man, or 
the man inevitably fall off from his nose. 

Nature accommodates herself to these 
emergencies, cried the opponents, — else 
what do you say to the case of a whole 
stomach, — a whole pair of lungs, and but 
half a. man, when both his legs have been 
unfortunately shot off] 

He dies of a plethora, said they, — or 
must spit blood, and in a fortnight or three 
weeks go off in a consumption. 

It happens otherwise, replied the 

opponents. 

It ought not, said they. 

The more curious and intimate inquirers 
after Nature and her doings, though they 
went hand in hand a good way together, 
yet they all divided about the nose at last, 
almost as much as the Faculty itself. 

They amicably laid it down, that there 
was a just and geometrical arrangement 
and proportion of the several parts of the 
human frame to its several destinations, 
offices, and functions, 'vhich could not be 
transgressed but within certain limits; — 
that Nature, though she sported, — si e 
sported within a certain circle, — and they. 
could not agree about the diameter of it. 

The logicians stuck much closer to the 
point before them than any of the classes 
of the literati ; — they began and ended with 
the word Nose ; and had it not been for a 
petitio principii, which one of the ablest of 
them ran his head against in the beginning 
of the combat, the whole controversy hail 
been settled at once. 

A nose, argued the logician, cannot h*et«d 
• 10* 



114 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

and not only blood, — but 



without bloody 
blond circulating in it to supply the phe- 
nomenon with a succession of drops — (a 
stream being- but a quicker succession of 

drops, that is included, said he.) Now 

death, continued the logician, being- nothing 
but the stagnation of the blood, 

I deny the definition : — death is the sepa- 
ration of the soul from the body, said his 

antagonist. Then we don't agree about 

our weapons, said the logician. Then 

there is an end of the dispute, replied the 
antagonist. 

The civilians were still more concise : 
what they offered being more in the nature 
■of a decree — than a dispute. 

Such a monstrous nose, said they, had it 
been a true nose, could not possibly have 
been suffered in civil society; — and if false, 
to impose upon society with such false signs 
■ find tokens, was a still greater violation of 
its rights, and must have had still less 
mercy shown it. 

The only objection to this was, that if it 
proved any thing, it proved the stranger's 
nose was neither true nor false. 

This left room for the controversy to go 
on. It was maintained by the advocates of 
the ecclesiastical court, that there was no- 
thing to inhibit a decree, since the stranger 
ex mero motu had confessed he had been 
at the Promontory of Noses, and had got 

one of the goodliest, &c. &c. To this 

it was answered, It was impossible there 
should be such a place as the Promontory 
of Noses, and the learned be ignorant where 
it lay. The commissary of the Bishop of 
Strasburg undertook the advocates' part, 
explained this matter in a treatise upon 
proverbial phrases, showing them, that the 
Promontory of Noses was a mere allegoric 
expression, importing no more than that 
nature had given him a long nose : in proof 
*»f which, with great learning, he cited the 
underwritten authories,* which had decided 



* Nonnulli ex nostratibus eadem loquendi formula 

.num. Quinimo & Logistae & Canonists. Vid. 

Parce Barnc J as in d. L. Provincial. Constitut. de con- 
jee, vid. Vol. Lib. 4. Titul. I. n. 7. qua etiam in re 
conspir. Om. de Promontorio Nas. Tichmak. ff d. tit. 
3. fol. 189. passim. Vid. Glos. de contrahend. empt. &c. I 
necnon. J. Scrudr. in cap. § refut per totum. Cum his 
foils Rever. J. Tubal, Se/nent. & Pro cap 9. ff. 11, 
It obiter. V. & Li brum, cui Tit. de Ten is & Phra?. | 
B« f ad fnem, cum comment. N. Bardy Belg. Vid. j 



the point incontestably, had it not appeared 
that a dispute about some franchises of dear 
and chapter-lands, had been determined b) 
it nineteen years before. 

It happened, — I must not say unluckilj 
for Truth, because they were giving her 3 
lift another way in so doing, that the twt 
universities of Strasburg, — the Lutheran 
founded in the year 1538, by Jacobus Stur 
mius, counsellor of the senate, — and the 
Popish, founded by Leopold, archduke of 
Austria, were, during all this time, employ- 
ing the whole depth of their knowledge 
(except just what the affair of the abbess 
of Quedlingberg's placket-holes required) 
— in determining the point of Martin Lu- 
ther's damnation. 

The Popish doctors had undertaken to 
demonstrate, a priori, that from the neces- 
sary influence of the planets on the twenty- 
second day of October, 14S3, — when the 
moon was in the twelfth house, Jupiter, 
Mars, and Venus in the third; the Sun, Sat- 
urn, and Mercury, all got together in the 
fourth ; — that he must in course, and una- 
voidably, be a damn'd man; and that his 
doctrines, by a direct corollary, must be 
damn'd doctrines too. 

By inspection into his horoscope, where 
five planets were in coition all at once with 
Scorpio* (in reading this, my father would 
alw T ays shake his head) in the ninth house, 
which the Arabians allotted to religion, — it 
appeared that Martin Luther did not care 
one stiver about the matter: — and that, 
from the horoscope directed to the conjunc- 
tion of Mars — they made it plain likewise 
he must die cursing and blaspheming; — 
with the blast of which his soul (being 



Scrip. Argentoratens. de Antiq. Ecc. in Episc. Archiv 
fid. coll. per Von Jacobum Koinshoven Folio Argent. 
1533. praecip. ad finem. Quibus add. Rebuff in L. oh- 
venire de Signif. Nom. ff fol. &. de jure Gent. &. Civil, 
de protib. alinea feud, per federa, test. Joha. Luxitit 
in prolegom. quern velim videas, de Analy. Cap. 1, 2, 
3. Vid. Idea. 

* Horc miro, satisque horrenda. Planetarum toitio 
sub Scorpio Asterismo in nona cceli statione. quain 
Arabesreligionideputabantefficit Martin v m Lut hen, 'n 
sacrilegium hereticum, Christians religionis hostc-n 
acerrimum atque prophanum, exhoroscopi directions 
ad Martis coitum, religiosissimus obiit, ejus An ma 
scelestissima ad infernos navigat, — ab Alecto, Tisi 
phone & Megara flagellis igneis cniciata peiiuntur. 

Lucas Gaurieus inTractatu astrologico de p-ae- 

teritis multorum hominum accideiUibus pergenitunu 
cxaminatia. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

*teep'd in guilt) sailed before the wind in 
the lake ot heU-fire. 

The little objection of the Lutheran doc- 
tors to this, was, that it must certainly be 
the soul of another man, born October 22, 
'83, which was forced to sail down before 
the wind in that manner, — inasmuch as it 
appeared from the register of Islaben, in the 
county of Mansfelt, that Luther was not 
norn in the year 1483, but in 84 ; and not 
on the 22d day of October, but on the 10th 
of November, the eve of Martinmas-day, 
from whence he had the name of Martin. 

[ 1 must break off my translation for 

ft moment ; for, if I diu not, I know I should 
no more be able to shut my eyes in bed, than 
the abbess of Quedlingberg. — It is to tell 
the reader, that my father never read this 
passage of Slawkenbergius to my uncle 
Toby, but with triumph, — not over my un- 
cle Toby, for he never opposed him in it, — 
but. over the whole world. 

Now you see, brother Toby, he would 
say, looking up, " that Christian names are 
" not such indifferent things ;" — had Luther 
here been called by any other name but 
Martin, he would have been damn'd to all 
eternity ; — not that I look upon Martin, he 
would add, as a good name, — far from it, — 
'tis something better than a neutral, and 
but a little ; — yet, little as it is, you see it 
was of some service to him. 

My father knew the weakness of this 
prop to his hypothesis, as well as the best 
logician could show him, — yet so strange 
is the weakness of man at the same time, 
as it fell in his way, he could not for his life 
but make use of it; and it was certainly for 
this reason that though there are many sto- 
ries in Hafen Slawkenbergius's Decades 
full as entertaining as this I am translating, 
yet there is not one amongst them which 
my father read over with half the delight ; 
— it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses 



llfi 



together, — his Names and his Noses. — I 
will be bold to say, he might have read all 
the books in the Alexandrian Library, had 
not fate taken other, care of them, and not 
have met with a book or passage in one, 
which hit two such nails as these upon the 
:iead at one stroke.] 

The two universities of Strasburg were 
hard tugging at this affair of Luther's navi- 
gation The Protestant doctors had demon- 



strated, that he had not sniled right De*we 
the wind, as the Popish doctors had protrud- 
ed ; and as every one knew there was no 
sailing full in the teeth of it, — they were 
going to settle, in case he had sailed, how 
many points he was off; whether Martin had 
doubled the Cape, or had fallen upon a lee 
shore ; and no doubt, as it was an inquiry of 
much edification, at least to those who un 
derstood this sort of navigation, they had 
gone on with it in spite of the size of *he 
stranger's nose, had not the size of he 
stranger's nose drawn off the attention of 
the world from what they were about : — it 
was their business to follow. 

The abbess of Quedlingberg and her four 
dignitaries were no stop ; for the enormity 
of the stranger's nose running full as much 
in their fancies as their case of conscience, 
— the affair of their placket-holes kept cold : 
in a word, the printers were ordered to 
distribute their types: — all controversies 
dropp'd. 

'Twas a square cap with a silver tassel 
upon the crown of it — to a nut-shell, — to 
have guessed on which side of the nose the 
two universities would split. 

'Tis above reason, cried the doctors on 
one side. 

'Tis below reason, cried the others. 

'Tis faith, cried one. 

'Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other. 

'Tis possible, cried the one. 

'Tis impossible, said the other. 

God's power is infinite, cried the Nosari* 
ans ; he can do any thing. 

He can do nothing .eplied the Antinosa- 
rians, which implies contradictions. 

He can make matter think, said the No- 
sarians. 

As certainly as you can make a velvet 
cap out of a sow's ear, replied the Antino- 
sarians. 

He cannot make two and two five, replied 

the Popish doctors. 'Tis false, said the 

other opponents. 

Infinite power is infinite power, said *be 
doctors who maintained the reality of the 
nose. — It extends only to all possible things, 
replied the Lutherans. 

By God in Heaven, cried the Popish doc- 
tors, he can make a nose, if he thinks tit, an 
big as the steeple of Strasburg. 

Now the steepl' of Strasburg being th* 



116 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



oiggest and die tallest church-steeple to be 
seen in the w hole world, the Antinosarians 
denied "hat a nose of 575 geometrical feet in 
length, could be worn, at least by a middle- 
eiz'd man. — The Popish doctors swore it 
could: — the Lutheran doctors said No; — it 
could not. 

This at once started a new dispute, which 
they pursued a great way, upon the extent 
and limitation of the moral and natural at- 
tributes of God. — That controversy led them 
naturally into Thomas Aquinas ; and Thomas 
Aquinas to the Devil. 

The stranger's nose was no more heard 
of in the dispute ; — it just served as a frigate, 
to launch them into the gulf of school di- 
vinity, — and then they all sailed before the 
wind. 

Heat is in proportion to the want of true 
knowledge. 

The controversy about the attributes, &c. 
instead of cooling, on the contrary had in- 
flamed the Strasburgers' imaginations to a 
most inordinate degree. — The less they un- 
derstood of the matter, the greater was their 
wonder about it ; — they were left in all the 
distresses of desire unsatisfied, — saw their 
doctors, the P archmentarians, the Brassa- 
rians, the Turpentarians, on one side, — 
the Popish doctors on the other, like Pan- 
tagruel and his companions in quest of the 
oracle of the bottle, all embarked out of 
eight. 

The poor Strasburgers left upon the 

beach ! 

What was to be done ! — No delay ; 

— the uproar increased, — every one in dis- 
order, — the city-gates set open. 

Unfortunate Strasburgers ! was there in 
the store-house of nature, — was there in the 
lumber-rooms of learning, — was there in 
the great arsenal of chance, one single en- 
gine left undrawn forth to torture your cu- 
riosities, and stretch your desires, which 
was not pointed uy the hand of Fate to play 
upon your hearts ] — I dip not my pen into 
my ink to excuse the surrender of yourselves, 
— 'tis to write your panegyric. Show" me a 
city so macerated with expectation, — who 
neither eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or 
hearkened to the calls either of religion or 
nature, for seven-and-twenty days together, 
who couid have held out one day longer! 



On the twenty-eighth the courteous stran- 
ger had promised to return to Strasburg. 

Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergius 
must certainly have made some mistake in 
his numerical characters) 7000 coaches, — 
15,000 single-horse chairs, — 20,000 wag- 
ons, crowded as full as they could all hold 
with senators, counsellors, syndics, — be- 
guines, widows, wives, virgins, canons, con- 
cubines, all in their coaches : — The abbess 
of Quedlingberg, with the prioress, the 
deaness, and subchantress, leading the pro- 
cession in one coach, and the dean of Stras- 
burg, with the four great dignitaries of his 
chapter, on her left hand, — the rest follow- 
ing higglety-pigglety as they could ; some 
on horseback, — some on foot, — some led, 
some driven, some down the Rhine, — some 
this way, — some that, — all set out at sun- 
rise to meet the courteous stranger on the 
road. 

Haste we now towards the catastrophe 
of my tale, — I say catastrophe (cries Slaw- 
kenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts 
rightly disposed, not only rejoiceth (gaudet) 
in the Catastrophe and Peripeitia of a 
drama, but rejoiceth moreover in all the 
essential and integrant parts of it ; — it has 
its Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis, its Ca- 
tastrophe, or Peripeitia, growing one out 
of the other in it, in the order Aristotle first 
planted them, — without which a tale had 
better never be told at all, says Slawken- 
bergius, but be kept to a man's self. 

In all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, 
have I, Slawkenbergius, tied down every 
tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have 
done this of the stranger and his nose. 

— From his first parley with the sentinel, 
to his leaving the city of Strasburg, after 
pulling off his crimson-satin pair of breeches, 
is the Protasis or first entrance, — where 
the characters of the Persona Dramatis 
are just touched in, and the subject slightly 
begun. 

The Epitasis, wherein the action is more 
fully entered upon and heightened, till it 
arrives at its state or height, called the 
Catastasis, and which usually takes up the 
2nd and 3d act, is included within that busy 
period of my tale, betwixt the first night's 
uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of 
the trumpeter's wife's lectures upon it in 



the middle of the grand parade; and from 
the first embarking of the learned in the 
dispute, — to the doctors' finally sailing away, 
fend leaviug the Strasburgers upon the beach 
in distress, is the Cat.astasis, or the ripen- 
ing of the incidents and passions for their 
Oursting forth in the fifth act 

This commences with the setting out of 
the Strasburgers on the Frankfort road, and 
terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and 
bi inging the hero out of a state of agita- 
tion (as Aristotle calls it) to a state of rest 
and quietness. 

This, says Hafen Slawkenbergius, con- 
stitutes the Catastrophe or Peripeitia of 
my tale ; — and that is the part of it I am 
going to relate. 

We left the stranger behind the curtain 
asleep : — he enters now upon the stage. 

— What dost thou prick up thy eai*s at? 
— 'tis nothing but a man upon a horse ; was 
the last word the stranger uttered to his 
mule. It was not proper then to tell the 
reader that the mule took his master's word 
for it; and without any more ifs or ands, 
let the traveller and his horse pass by. 

The traveller was hastening with all 
diligence to get to Strasbjirg that night. 
What a fool am I, said the traveller to him- 
self, when he had rode about a league far- 
ther, to think of getting into Strasburg this 
night ! — Strasburg ! — the great Strasburg ! 
— Strasburg, the capital of all Alsatia! Stras- 
burg, an imperial city ! Strasburg, a sove- 
reign state ! Strasburg, garrisoned with five 
thousand of the best troops in all th« world ! 
— Alas ! if I was at the gates of Strasburg 
this moment, I could not gain admittance 
into it for a ducat,: — nay, a ducat and a half; 
— 'tis too much, — better go back to the last 
inn I have passed, — than lie I know not 
where, — or give I know not what. The 
traveller, as he made these reflections in 
his mind, turned his horse's head about, 
and three minutes after the stranger had 
been conducted into his chamber, he arrived 
tit the same inn. 

We have bacon in the house, said 

the host, and bread ; — and till eleven o'clock 
this night had three eggs in it; — but a 
stranger, who arrived an hour ago, has had 
them dressed into an omelet, and we have 
nothing. — 

A^! said the traveller, harassed as I 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 117 

am, I want nothing but a bed. 1 havf 

one as soft as is in Alsatia, said the host 

— The stranger, continued he, should 
have slept in it, for 'tis my best bed, but 

upon the score of his nose. He has go> 

a defluxion, said the traveller. Not that 

I know cried the host. — But 'tis a camp-bed, 
and Jacinta, said he, looking towards the 
maid, imagined there was not room in it to 
turn his nose in. Why so, cried the trav- 
eller, starting back. It is so long a nose, 

replied the host. The traveller fixed his 

eyes upon Jacinta, then upon the ground, 
— kneeled upon his right knee, had just go* 

his hand laid upon his breast Trifle not 

with my anxiety, said he, rising up again. 

'Tis no trifle, said Jacinta, 'tis the most 

glorious nose ! The traveller fell upon 

his knee again, — laid his hand upon his 
breast, — then, said he, looking up to heaven, 
thou hast conducted me to the end of my 
pilgrimage, — 'Tis Diego. 

The traveller was the brother of Julia, 
so often invoked that night by the stranger 
as he rode from Strasburg upon his mule ; 
and was come, on her part, in quest of him. 
He had accompanied his sister fromValladolid 
across the Pyrennean mountains through 
France, and had many an entangled skein 
to wind off in pursuit of him, through the 
many meanders and abrupt turnings of a 
lover's thorny tracks. 

Julia had sunk under it, — and had 

not been able to get a step farther than to 
Lyons, where, with the many disquietudes 
of a tender heart, which all talk of, — but 
few feel, — she sicken'd, but had just strength 
to write a letter to Diego ; and having con- 
jured her brother never to see her face till 
he had found him out, and put the letter into 
his hands, Julia took to her bed. 

Fernandez (for that was her brother's 
name) — though the camp-bed was as soil as 
any one in Alsace, ' yet he could not shut 
his eyes in it. — As boon as it was day, he 
rose ; and hearing Diego was risen too, he 
entered his chamber and discharged Kis 
sister's commirsion. 

The letter was as follows : 
"Seig. Diego, 

"Whether my suspicions of your nosp 
" were justly excited or not, — 'tis not no« 
" to inquire ; — it is enough I have not bno 
" firmness to put them to farther trial. 



118 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



•Hww could I know so little of myself, 
* when I .sent my duenna to forbid your 
* 4 coming more under my lattice] or how 
" could I know so little of you, Diego, as to 
" imagine you would have staid one day in 
" Valladolid to have given ease to my doubts'! 
" — Was I to be abandoned, Diego, because 
" I was deceived 1 or was it kind to take 
" me at my word, whether my suspicions 
" were just or no, and leave me, as you did, 
" a prey to much uncertainty and sorrow f 

" In what manner Julia has resented this, 
44 — my brother, when he puts this letter 
"■nto your hands, will tell you; he will 
" tell you in how few moments she repented 
" of the rash message she had sent you, — 
*' in what frantic haste she flew to her lat- 
" tice, and how many days and nights to- 
gether she leaned immovably upon her 
" elbow, looking through it towards the 
44 way which Diego was wont to come. 

44 He will tell you, when she heard of 
44 your departure, — how her spirits deserted 
44 her, how her heart sicken'd, — how pite- 
"ouslyshe mourned, — how low she hung 
44 her head. O Diego! how many weary 
44 steps has my brother's pity led me by the 
44 hand languishing to trace out yours ! how 
44 far has desire carried me beyond strength ! 
44 — and how oft have I fainted by the way, 
44 and sunk into his arms, with only power 
4k to cry out, — O my Diego ! 

44 If the gentleness of your carriage has 
44 not belied your heart, you will fly to me 
44 almost as fast as you fled from me : — haste 
44 as you will, — you will arrive but to see 
44 me expire. — 'Tis a bitter draught, Diego ; 
44 but oh ! 'tis embittered still more by dying 
» un .'" 

She could proceed no farther. 

Slawkenbergius supposes the word in- 
tended was unconvinced ; but her strength 
would not enable her to finish her letter. 

The heart of the courteous Diego over- 
flowed as he read the letter : — he ordered 
his mule forthwith and Fernandez's horse 
to be saddled ; and as no vent in prose is 
equal to that of poetry in such conflicts, 

chance, which as often directs us to 

remedies as to diseases, having thrown a 
piece of charcoal into the window, — Diego 
availed himself of it; and, whilst the ostler 
* as getting ready his mule, he eased his 
uiuid against the wall as follows: 



ODE. 



Harsh and untuneful are the notes of love 
Unless my Julia strikes the key, 

Her hand alone can touch the part. 
Whose dulcet move- 
ment charms the heart, 

And governs all the man with sympa- 
thetic sway. 

2d. 

O Julia ! 

The lines were very natural, — for they 
were nothing at all to the purpose, says 
Slawkenbergius, and 'tis a pity there were 
no more of them ; but whether it was that 
Seig. Diego was slow in composing verses, 
— or the ostler quick in saddling mules, — is 
not averred ; certain it was, that Diego's 
mule and Fernandez's horse were ready at 
the door of the inn before Diego was ready 
for his second stanza ; so, without staying 
to finish his ode, they both mounted, sallied 
forth, passed the Rhine, traversed Alsace, 
shaped their course towards Lyons, and, 
before the Strasburgers and the abbess of 
Quedlingberg had set out on their caval- 
cade, had Fernandez, Diego, and his Julia, 
crossed the Pyrennean mountains, and got 
safe to Valladolid. 

'Tis needless to inform the geographical 
reader, that, when Diego was in Spain, it 
was not possible to meet the courteous 
stranger in the Frankfort road ; it is enough 
to say, that of all restless desires, curiosity 
being the strongest, — the Strasburgers felt 
the full force of it ; and that for three days 
and nights they were tossed to and fro in 
the Frankfort road, with the tempestuous 
fury of this passion, before they could sub- 
mit to return home ; — when, alas ! an event 
was prepared for them, of all others, the 
most grievous that could befall a free people. 

As this revolution of the Strasburgers* 
affairs is often spoken of, and little under- 
stood 1 ; I will, in ten words, says Slaw ken- 
bergius, give the world an explanation of it, 
and with it put an end to my tale. 

Every body knows of the grand systerr 
of Universal Monarchy, wrote by order of 
Mon. Colbert, and put in manuscript into 
the hands of Louis the Fourteenth, in the 
year 1664. 

'Tis as well known, that one branch out 
of many of that systen was the getting 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



115 



pot session of Strasburg, to favor an entrance 
at all times into Suabia, in order to disturb 
the quiet of Germany ; — and that, in conse- 
quence of this plan, Strasburg unhappily fell 
at length into their hands. 

It is the lot of a few to trace out the true 
springs of this and such like revolutions ; 
— the vulgar look too high for them, — 
statesmen look too low ; — Truth (for once) 
lies in the middle. 

What a fatal thing is the popular pride 
of a free city! cries one historian. — The 
Strasburgers deemed it a diminution of 
their freedom to receive an imperial gar- 
rison, — so fell a prey to a French one. 

The fate, says another of the Strasburg- 
ers, may be a warning to all free people 
to save their money. — They anticipated 
their revenues, — brought themselves under 
taxes, exhausted their strength, and, in the 
end, became so weak a people, they had not 
strength to keep their gates shut; and, so 
the French pushed them open ! 

Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbergius, 'twas 
not the French, — 'twas curiosity pushed 
them open. — The French, indeed, who are 
ever upon the catch, when they saw the 
Strasburgers, men, women, and children, 
all marched out to follow the stranger's 
nose, — each man followed his own, and 
marched in. 

Trade and manufactures have decayed 
and gradually grown down ever since, — 
out not from any cause which commercial 
heads have assigned ; for it is owing to this 
only, that Noses have ever so run in their 
heads, that the Strasburgers could not follow 
their business. 

Alas ! alas ! cries Slawkenbergius, making 
an exclamation, — it is not the first, — and I 
fear will not be the last fortress that has 
been either won — or lost by Noses. 

THE END OF SLAWKENBERGIUS's TALE. 



CHAP. I. 



With all this learning upon Noses run- 
ning perpetually in my father's fancy, — 
with so many family prejudices, — and ten 
decades of such tales running on for ever 
along with them, — how was it possible with 
such exauiovte, — was it a true nose? — that 



a man with such exquisite feelings as m* 
father had, could bear the shock at all be- 
low stairs, — or indeed above stairs, in any 
other posture but the very posture I have 
described ] 

Throw yourself down upon tie bed 

a dozen times, — taking care only to place a 
looking-glass first in a chair on one side of 
it before you do it. — But was the stranger's 
nose a true nose, or was it a false one ) 

To tell that beforehand, Madam, would 
be to do injury to one of the best tales in the 
Christian world ; and that is the tenth of the 
tenth decade, which immediately follows 
this. 

This tale, cried Slawkenbergius, some- 
what exultingly, has been reserved by me for 
the concluding tale of my whole work; know- 
ing right well, that when I shall have told 
it, and my reader shall have read it through, 
— 'twould be even high time for both of us 
to shut up the book ; inasmuch, continues 
Slawkenbergius, as I know of no tale which 
could possibly ever go down after it. 

— 'Tis a tale indeed ! 

This sets out with the first interview in 
the inn at Lyons, when Fernandez left the 
courteous stranger and his sister Julia 
alone in her chamber, and is overwritten 

THE INTRICACIES 

OF 
DIEGO AND JULIA. 

Heavens! thou art a strange creature, 
Slawkenbergius! what a whimsical view of 
the involutions of the heart of woman hast' 
thou opened ! how this can ever be trans- 
lated, and yet if this specimen of Slawken 
bergius's tales, and the exquisiteness of his 
moral, should please the world, — translated 
shall a couple of volumes be. — Else, how 
this can ever be translated into good Eng- 
lish, I have no sort of conception. — There 
seems, in some passages, to want a sixth 
sense to do it rightly. — What can he mean 
by the lambent pupilability of slow, low. 
dry chat, five notes below tne natural 
tone, — which you know, Madam, is little 
more than a whisper? The moment I pro* 
nounced the words, I could perceive an at- 
tempt towards a vibration in the strings 
about the region of the heart. — The brain 
made no acknowledgment. — There s ofteii 



120 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



no good undemanding betwixt 'em : — I felt 
as if I understood it. — I had no ideas. — The 
movement could not be without cause. — 
Tin lost. — I can make nothing of it, — un- 
less, may it please yot<- Worships, the 
voice, in that case bekii .rr°"'e more than a 
whisper, unavoidably f'.'T' w, the eyes to ap- 
proach not only wiuL^ Ax inches of each 
other, — but to look Lllu the pupils. — Is not 
that dangerous 1 — But it can't be avoided ; 
— for to look up to the ceiling, in that case 
the two chins unavoidably meet ; — and, to 
look down into each other's lap, the fore- 
heads come into immediate contact, which 
at. once puts an end to the conference, — I 
mean to the sentimental part of it. — What 
is left, Madam, is not worth stooping for. 



CHAP. II. 



My father lay stretched across the bed 
as still as if the hand of death had pushed 
him down, for a full hour and a half before 
he began to play upon the floor with the 
toe of that foot which hung over the bed- 
side. My uncle Toby's heart was a pound 
lighter for it. — In a few moments, his left 
hand, the knuckles of which had all the 
time reclined upon the handle of the cham- 
ber-pot, came to its feeling ; — he thrust it a 
little more within the valance, — drew up 
his hand, when he had done, into his bosom, 
— gave a hem ! My good uncle Toby, with 
infinite pleasure, answered it; and full 
gladly would have ingrafted a sentence of 
consolation upon the opening it afforded : 
but having no talents, as I said, that way, 
and fearing, moreover, that he might set 
out with something which might' make a 
bad matter worse, he contented himself 
with resting his chin placidly upon the cross 
of his crutch. 

Now, whether the compression shortened 
my uncle Toby's face into a more pleasurable 
oval, — or that the philanthropy of his heart, 
in seeing his brother beginning to emerge 
out of the sea of his afflictions, had braced 
up his muscles, — so that the compression 
jpon his chin only doubled the benignity 
•vhich was there before, is not hard to de- 
cide. — My facner, m turning his eyes, was 
biruck with such a gleam of sun-shine in 



his, face, as melted down the sullenness ot 
his grief in a moment. 

He broke silence as follows : — 



CHAP. III. 



Did ever man, brother Toby, cried my 
father, raising himself upon his elbow, and 
turning himself round to the opposite side 
of the bed, where my uncle Toby was sit 
ting in his old fringed chair, with his chin 
resting upon his crutch, — did ever a pooi 
unfortunate man, brother Toby, cried my 

father, receive so many lashes'? The 

most I ever saw given, quoth my uncle 
Toby (ringing the bell at the bed's head 
for Trim) was to a grenadier, I think, in 
Mackay's regiment. 

Had my uncle Toby shot a bullet 

through my father's heart, he could not 
have fallen down with his nose upon the 
quilt more suddenly. 

Bless me ! said my uncle Toby. 



CHAP. IV. 



Was it Mackay's regiment, quoth my 
uncle Toby, where the poor grenadier was 
so unmercifully whipp'd at Bruges, about 

the ducats? O Christ ! he was innocent ! 

cried Trim, with a deep sigh. — And he was 
whipp'd, may it please your Honor, almost 
to Death's door. — They had better have 
shot him outright, as he begg'd, and he had 
gone directly to Heaven ; for he was as in- 
nocent as your Honor. 1 thank thee, 

Trim, quoth my uncle Toby. 1 never 

think of his, continued Trim, and my poor 
brother Tom's misfortunes, for we were all 
three school-fellows, but I cry like a coward. 

Tears are no proof of cowardice, Trim. 

— I drop them oft-times myself, cried my 

uncle Toby. 1 know your Honor does, 

replied Trim, and so am not ashamed of it 
myself. — But to think, may it please your 
Honor, continued Trim, a tear stealing 
into the corner of his eye as he spoke, — to 
think of two virtuous lads with hearts as 
warm in their bodies, and as honest as God 
could make them, — the children of hones 1 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



12) 



Deople, going forth with gallant spirits to 
seek their fortunes in the world, — and fall 
into such evils ! — poor Tom ! to be tortured 
upon a rack for nothing — but marrying a 
Jew's widow who sold sausages ! — honest 
Dick Johnson's soul to be scourged out of 
nis body, for the ducats another man put 
into his knapsack ! — O ! — these are misfor 
tunes, cried Trim, — pulling out his hand- 
kerchief, — these are misfortunes, may it 
please your Honor, worth lying down and 
crying over. 

— My father could not help blushing. 

'Twould be a pity, Trim, quoth my uncle 
Toby, thou shouldst ever feel sorrow of thy 
own ; — thou feelest it so tenderly for others. 
— Alack-a-day, replied the corporal bright- 
ening up his face, — your Honor knows I 
have neither wife or child ; — I can have no 

sorrows in this world. -My father could 

not help smiling. As few as any man, 

Trim, replied my uncle Toby ; nor can I see 
how a fellow of thy light heart can suffer, 
but from the distress of poverty in thy old 
age, when thou art passed all services, 

Trim, — and hast outlived thy friends. 

An' please your Honor, never fear, replied 

Trim, cheerly. But I would have thee 

never fear, Trim, replied my uncle Toby ; 
and therefore, continued my uncle Toby, 
throwing down his crutch, and getting up 
upon his legs as he uttered the word there- 
fore, — in recompense, Trim, of thy long 
fidelity to me, and that goodness of thy 
heart I have had such proofs of, — whilst thy 
master is worth a shilling, — thou shalt 
never ask elsewhere, Trim, for a penny. 

-Trim attempted to thank my uncle 

Toby, — but had not power ; — tears trickled 
down his cheeks faster than he could wipe 
them off. — he laid his hands upon his breast, 
— made a bow to the ground, and shut the 
door. 

1 have left Trim my bowling-green, 

cried my uncle Toby. — My father smiled. 
— I have left him, moreover, a pension, 

continued my uncle Toby. My father 

looked grave. 



CHAP. VI. 



CHAP. V. 



Is this a fit time, said my father to him- 
self, to talk of pensions and grenadiers ? 

a 



When my uncle Toby first mentioned 
the grenadier, my father, I said, fell down 
with his nose flat to the quilt, and as sud- 
denly as if my uncle Toby had shot him 
but it was not added that every other limb 
and member of my father instantly relapsed, 
with his nose, into the same precise atti- 
tude in which he lay first described ; so that 
when Corporal Trim left the room, ana my 
father found himself disposed to rise off 
the bed, — he had all the little preparatory 
movements to run over again before he 
could do it. — Attitudes are nothing, Madam, 
— 'tis the transition from one attitude to 
another, — like the preparation and resolu- 
tion of the discord into harmony, which is 
all in all. 

For which reason, my father played the 
same jig over again with his toe upon the 
floor, — pushed the chamber-pot still a little 
farther within the valance, — gave a hem, 
— raised himself up upon his elbow, — and 
was just beginning to address himself to 
my uncle Toby, — when, recollecting the 
unsuccessfulness of his first effort in that 
attitude, — he got upon his legs, and in 
making the third turn across the room, he 
stopped short before my uncle Toby ; and 
laying the three first fingers of his right 
hand in the palm of his left, and stooping a 
little, he addressed himself to my uncie 
Toby as follows : — 



CHAP. VII. 

When I reflect, brother Toby, upon man ; 
and take a view of that dark side of hin 
which represents his life as open to so many 
causes of trouble; — when I consider, bro- 
ther Toby, how oft we eat the bread of 
affliction, and that we are born to it, as to 

the portion of our inheritance, 1 was born 

to nothing, quoth my uncle Toby, inter- 
rupting my father, — but my commission. 

Zooks! said my father, did not my 

uncle leave you a hundred and twenty 

pounds a year . What could 1 nave done 

without it? replied my uncle Toby. 

That's another concern, said my father 
testily ; — but I say, Toby, when one run* 
11 



22 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



ever tie catalogue of all the cross-reckon- 
ings and sorrowful i f ems with which the 
lieart of n. in is overcharged, 'tis wonderful 
by what hidden resources the mind is ena- 
bled to stand it out, and bear itself up, as it 
does, against the impositions laid upon our 
nature. 'Tis by the assistance of Al- 
mighty God, cried my uncle Toby, looking 
up, and pressing the palms of his hands 
close together, — 'tis not from our own 
strength, brother Shandy ; — a sentinel in a 
wooden sentry-box might as well pretend to 
stand it out against a detachment of fifty 
men. — We are upheld by the grace and the 
assistance of the best of Beings. 

That is cutting the knot, said my 

father, instead of untying it. — But give me 
leave to lead you, brother Toby, a little 
deeper into the mystery. 

With all my heart, replied my uncle 
Toby. 

My father instantly exchanged the atti- 
tude he was in, for that in which Socrates 
is so finely painted by Raphael, in his 
school of Athens ; which your connoisseur- 
ship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that 
even the particular manner of the reasoning 
of Socrates is expressed by it, — for he holds 
the fore-finger of his left-hand between the 
fore-finger and the thumb of his right ; and 
seems as if he was saying to the libertine 
he is reclaiming, — " You grant me this, — 
" and this : and this, and this, I don't ask 
" of you ; — they follow of themselves in 
" course." 

So stood my father, holding fast his fore- 
finger betwixt his finger and his thumb, and 
reasoning with my uncle Toby as he sat in 
his old fringed chair, valanced around with 

party-colored worsted bobs. O Garrick ! 

— what a rich scene of this would thy ex- 
quisite powers make ! and how gladly would 
I write such another to avail myself of thy 
immortality, and secure my own behind it ! 



CHAP. VIII. 

TnouGH man is of all others the most 
curious vehicle, said my father ; yet, at the 
*ame time, 'tis of so slight a frame, and so 
•>oT,teringly put together, that the sudden 
*»rks and hard jostlings it unavoidably 



meets with in this rugged journey, would 
overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a 
day, — was it not, brother Toby, that there 

is a secret spring within us. Which 

spring, said my uncle Toby, I take to be 

Religion. Will that set my child's nose 

on ] cried my father, letting go his finger, 
and striking one hand against the other. 

It makes every thing straight for us, 

answered my uncle Toby. Figuratively 

speaking, dear Toby, it may, for aught 1 
know, said my father ; but the spring I am 
speaking of, is that great and elastic power 
within us of counterbalancing evil ; which, 
like a secret spring in a well-ordered ma 
chine, though it can't prevent the shock,- 
at least, it imposes upon our sense of it 

Now, my dear brother, said my father 
replacing his fore-finger as he was coming 
closer to the point, — had my child arrived 
safe into the world, unmartyr'd in that pre ■ 
cious part of him, fanciful and extravagant 
as I may appear to the world in my opinion 
of christian names, and of that magic bias 
which good or bad names irresistibly im- 
press upon our characters and conducts, — 
Heaven is witness, that in the warmest 
transports of my wishes for the prosperity 
of my child, I never once wished to crown 
his head with more glory and honor than 
what George or Edward would have spread 
around it. 

But alas! continued my father, as the 
greatest evil has befallen him, — I must 
counteract and undo it with the greatest 
good. 

He shall be christened Trismegistus, bro- 
ther. 

I wish it may answer, — replied my uncle 
Toby, rising up. 



CHAP. IX. 



What a chapter of chances! said my 
father, turning himself about on the first 
landing, as he and my uncle Toby were 
going down stairs: — what a long chapter 
of chances do the events of this woild lay 
open to us! Take Den and ink in hand 

brother Toby, and calculate it fa rly.- 1 

know no more of calculation thar. this bal 
uster, said my uncle Toby (striking short 



OF TRISTR. 

of it with his crutch, and hitting- my father 
1 desperate blow souse upon his shin-bone.) 
—'Twas a hundred to one, — cried my uncle 
Toby 1 thought, quoth my father (rub- 
bing his shin) you had known nothing- of 

calculations, brother Toby.- 'Twas a 

mere chance, said my uncle Toby. Then 

it adds one to the chapter, — replied my 
father. 

The double success of my father's re- 
partees tickled off the pain of his shin at 
once • — it was well it so fell out — (chance ! 
again) — or the world to this day had never 
known the subject of my father's calcula- 
tion ; — to guess it there was no chance. — 
What a lucky chapter of chances has this 
turned out ! for it has saved me the trouble 
of writing one express ; and in truth I have 
enough already upon my hands without it. 
Have I not promised the world a chapter of 
knots ! two chapters upon the right and the 
wrong end of a "vVoman? a chapter upon 
whiskers ? a chapter upon wishes \ a chap- 
ter of noses? — No: I have done that; — a 
chapter upon my uncle Toby's modesty ? — 
to say nothing of a chapter upon chapters, 
which I will finish before I sleep. — By my 
great-grandfather's whiskers, I shall never 
get half of 'em through this year. 

Take pen and ink in hand, and calculate 
it fairly, brother Toby, said my father ; and 
it will turn out a million to one, that of all 
the parts of the body, the edge of the for- 
ceps should have the ill-luck just to fall 
upon and break down that one part, which 
should break down the fortunes of our house 
with it. 

It might have been worse, replied my 

uncle Toby. 1 don't comprehend, said 

my father. Suppose the hip had pre- 
sented, replied my uncle Toby, as Dr. Slop 
foreboded ? 

My father reflected half a minute; — 
l(K)ked down, — touched the middle of his 
forehead slightly with his finger 

— True, said he. 



\M SHANDY. 



123 



CHAP. X. 



Is it not a i&ame to make two chapters 
of what passed in going down one pair of 
stairs 1 for we are got no farther yet than to 



the first landing, and there are fifteen inorf» 
steps down to the bottom; and, for aught 1 
know, as my father and my uncle Toby an 
in a talking humor, there may be as man) 
chapters as steps. Let that be as it will 
Sir, I can no more help it than my destiny. 
— A sudden impulse comes across me;— 
— drop the curtain, Shandy : — I drop it — 
Strike a line here across the paper, Tris- 
tram: — I strike it, — and hey for a new 
chapter. 

The deuce of any other rule have I to 
govern myself by in this affair ; — and if I 
had one, — as I do all things out of all rule, 
— I would twist it and tear it to pieces, and 
throw it into the fire when I had done. — 
Am I warm? I am, and the cause demands 
it : — a pretty story ! is a man to follow rules, 
or rules to follow him ? 

Now this, you must know, being my 
chapter upon chapters, which I promised 
to write before I went to sleep, I thought 
it meet to ease my conscience entirely 
before I laid down, by telling the world all 
I knew about the matter at once. Is not 
this ten times better than to set out dog- 
matically with a sententious parade of wis- 
dom, and telling the world a story of a 
roasted horse? — that chapters relieve the 
mind, — that they assist, — or impose upon 
the imagination, — and that in a work of 
this dramatic cast they are as necessary as 
the shifting of scenes, — with fifty other cold 
conceits, enough to extinguish the fire 
which roasted him ! O ! but to understand 
this, which is a puff at the fire of Diana's 
temple, — you must read Longinus : — read 
away : — if you are not a jot the wiser by 
reading him the first time over, — never 
fear, — read him again. — Avicenna and 
Licetus read Aristotle's Metaphysics forty 
times through vpiece, and never under- 
stood a single word ! — But mark the conse- 
quence. — Avicenna turned out a desperate 
writer at all kinds of wilting ; — for he wrote 
books de omni scribili ; and for Licetus 
(Fortunio) — though all the world knows he 
was born a foetus,* of no more than five 



* Ce foetus n'etoit pas plus pran.1 que la paume de 
la main; mais son pere I'ayant examine en qualite 
de Medecin, & ayant trouve que e'etoit qtielque chow 
de plus qu'un Embrvon, le fit transporter tout vivant 
a Rapallo, ou il le fit voir a Jerome Bardi feasant:"* 
Medecins du lieu. On trouva qu'il ne 'ui mamiuo* 



124 

inches and a half in length, yet he grew to 
that astonishing height in literature, as to 
write a book with a title as long as himself. 
The learned know I mean his Gonopsy- 
chanthropologia upon the origin of the 
Human Soul. 

So much for my chapter upon chapters, 
which I hold to be the best chapter in my 
whole work ; and, take my word, whoever 
reads it, is full as well employed as in pick- 
ing straws. 



CHAP. XI. 



We shall bring all things to rights, said 
my father, setting his foot upon the first 
step from the landing. — This Trismegistus, 
continued my father, drawing his leg back, 
and turning to my uncle Toby, — was the 
greatest (Toby) of all earthly beings ; — he 
was the greatest king, — the greatest law- 
giver, — the greatest philosopher, — and the 

greatest priest ; and engineer, — said my 

uncle Toby. 

In course, said my father. 



CHAP. XII. 

— And how does your mistress? cried 
my father, taking the same step over again 



nen d'essentiel a la vie; &. son pere pour faire voir 
un essai de son experience, entreprit d'achever I'ouv- 
rage de la Nature, & de travailler a la formation de 
I'Enfant avec le meme artifice que celui dont on se 
sert pour faire ecclore les Poulets en Egypte. I] 
instruisit une Nourisse de tout ce qu'elle avoit a faire, 
&. ayant fait mettre son fils dans un pour propre- 
ment accommode, il recussit a l'elever & a lui faire 
prendre ses accroissemens necessaires, par l'unifor- 
mite d'une clialeur etrangere mesuree exactement sur 
les degres d'un Thermometre, ou d'un autre instru- 
ment equivalent. (Vide Mich. Giustinian, ne gli Scritt 
Liguri a Cart. 223. 488. 

On auroit toujours ete tres satisfait de l'industrie 
d un pere si experiments dans l'Art de la Generation, 
quand il n'auroit pii prolonger la vie a son fils quel 
pour quelques mois, ou pour peu d'annees. 

Alois quand on se represente que I'Enfant a vecu 
pres pe quatre-vingts ans, & qu'il a compose quatre- 
vingts Ouvrages differents tous fruits d'une longue 
lecture— il faul convenir que tout ce qui est incroyable 
n'est pas toujours faux, & que la " Vraisemblance 
n'est p:is toujours du cot.i de la Verite." 

Tl n'avoit qje dix-neuf ans lorsqu'il composa Go- 
uopsycnanthropologia de Origine Anirrte humans. 

(Les Enfans celcbres, revus & corriges par M. de la 
klonnoyf; de l'Acaaemie Fran^ise.) 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

from the landing, and calling to Susannah, 
whom he saw passing by the foot of the 
stairs with a huge pin-cushion in her hand, 

— how does your mistress 1 As well, said 

Susannah, tripping by, but without looking 

up, as can be expected. What a fool 

am I ! said my father, drawing his leg back 
again, — let things be as they will, brother 
Toby, 'tis ever the precise answer. — And 

how is the child, pray? No answer. — 

And where is Dr. Slop 1 — added my father, 
raising his voice aloud, and looking over the 
balusters. — Susannah was out of hearing. 

Of all the riddles of a married life, said 
my father, crossing the landing, in order to 
set his back against the wall whilst he pro- 
pounded it to my uncle Toby, — of all the 
puzzling riddles, said he, in the marriage 
state, — of which, you may trust me, brother 
Toby, there are more asses' loads than all 
Job's stock of asses could have carried, — 
there is not one that has more intricacies in 
it than this : — that from the very moment 
the mistress of the house is brought to bed, 
every female in it, from my lady's gentle- 
woman down to the cinder-wench, becomes 
an inch taller for it ; and gives herself more 
airs upon that single inch, than all her other 
inches put together. 

I think rather, replied my uncle Toby, 
that 'tis we who sink an inch lower. — If 
I meet but a woman with child, — I do it 
— 'Tis a heavy tax,upon that half of our fel 
low-creatures, brother Shandy, said my un- 
cle Toby. — 'Tis a piteous burden upon 'em, 

continued he, shaking his head. Yes, 

yes, 'tis a painful thing, — said my father, 
shaking his head too : — but certainly since 
shaking of heads came into fashion, never 
did two heads shake together, in concert, 
from two such different springs. 

Deucetake \ ' em all '- said ™Y uncle Tob * 
and my father ; each to himself. 



CHAP. XIII. 

Holla ! — you chairman ! — here s six- 
pence : — do step into that bookseller's shop, 
and call me a day-tall critic. I am very 
willing to give any one of 'em a crown to 
help me with his tackling to get my frthe 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 125 

words, shall lead a couple of fine lives to- 
gether. 

As for the proposal of twelve volumes *> 
year, or a volume a month, it no way alters 
my prospects : — write as I will, and rush as 
I may into the middle of things, as Horace 
advises, — I shall never overtake myselt 
whipp'd and driven to the last pinch. At 
the worst I shall have one day the start of 
my pen, — and one day is enough for two 
volumes! — and two volumes will be enough 
for one year. — 

Heaven prosper the manufacturers of 
paper under this propitious reign, which is 
now opened to us ! as I trust its providence 
will prosper every thing else in it that is 
taken in hand. 

As for the propagation of geese, I give 
myself no concern, — Nature is all-bountiful ; 
— I shall never want tools to work with. 

— So then, friend, you have got my father 
and my uncle Toby off the stairs, and seen 
them to bed? — And how did you manage 
it? — You dropp'd a curtain at the stair-foot 
I thought you had no other way for it. — 
Here's a crown for your trouble. 



and my uncle Toby off the stairs, and to put 
them to bed. 

— 'Tis even high time; for, except a 
short nap which they both got whilst Trim 
was boring the jack-boots, — and which, by 
the bye, did my father no sort of good, upon 
the score of the bad hinge, — they have not 
else shut their eyes since nine hours before 
the time that Doctor Slop was led into the 
hack-parlor in that dirty pickle by Obadiah. 

Was every day of my life to be as busy a 
day as this,— and to take up Truce ; 

I will not finish that sentence till I have 
made an observation upon the strange state 
of affairs between the reader and myself, 
just as things stand at present: — an obser- 
vation never applicable before to any one 
biographical writer since the creation of 
the world, but to myself; — and, I believe, 
will never hold good to any other, until its 
final destruction ; — and, therefore, for the 
very novelty of it alone, it must be worth 
your Worships' attending to. 

I am this month one whole year older 
than I was this time twelve-month ; and 
having got, as you perceive, almost into the 
middle of my third volume,* — and no far- 
ther than to my first day's life, — 'tis demon- 
strative that I have 364 days more life to 
write just now, than when I first set out , 
so that, instead of advancing, as a common 
writer, in my work with what I have been 
doing at it; — on the contrary, I am just — Then reach my breeches off the chair, 



CHAP. XIV. 



thrown so many volumes back. — Was every 
day of my life to be as busy a day as this, — 
And why not? — and the transactions and 
opinions of it to take up as much descrip- 
tion, — And for what reason should they 
be cut short ? as at this rate I should just 
live 364 times faster than I should write, — 
it must follow, an' please your Worships, 
that the more I write, the more I shall have 
to write, — and, consequently, the more 
your Worships read, the more your Wor- 
ships will have to read. 

Will this be good for your Worships' 
eyes? 

It will do well for mine ; and was it not 
lhat my Opinions will be the death of me, 
4 perceive I shall lead a fine life of it out 
of this self-same Life of mine ; or, in other 



* According to the original editions. 



said my father to Susannah, There is 

not a moment's time to dress you, Sir, cried 
Susannah, — the child is as black in the 

face as my As your what? said my 

father ; for, like all orators, he was a dear 

searcher into comparisons. Bless me, 

Sir, said Susannah, the child's in a fit 

And where's Mr. Yorick ? Never 

where he should be, said Susannah; but 
his curate's in the dressing-room, with the 
child upon his arm, waiting for the name : 
— and my mistress bid me run as fast as I 
could to know, as Captain Shandy is the 
godfather, whether it should not be called 
after him? 

Were one sure, said my father to himself, 
scratching his eye-brow, that the child was 
expiring, one might as well compliment my 
brother Toby as not, — and it would be a 
pity, in such a case, to Mirow away ^o great 



126 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



a name as frismegistus upon mm : — but he 
may recovei. 

No, no — said my father to Susannah, I'll 
get up, -There is no time, cried Susan- 
nah, the child's as black as my shoe. 

Trismegistus, said my father. — But stay, — 
thou art a, leaky vessel, Susannah, added 
my father ; canst thou carry Trismegistus 
in thy head the length of the gallery with- 
out scattering 1 Can 1 1 cried Susannah, 

shutting the door in a huff. If she can, 

I'll be shot, said my father, bouncing out 
of bed in the dark, and groping for his 
breeches. 

Susannah ran with all speed along the 
gallery. 

My father made all possible speed to find 
his breeches. 

Susannah got the start, and kept it. — 

'Tis Tris — something, cried Susannah. 

There is no christian name in the world, 
said the curate, beginning with Tris — , but 

Tristram. Then 'tis Tristram-gistus, 

quoth Susannah. 

There is no gistus .to it, noodle ! — 

'tis my own name, replied the curate, dip- 
ping his hand, as he spoke, into the bason ; 
Tristram ! said he, &c. &c. &c. &c. : — so 
Tristram was I called, and Tristram shall 
I be to the day of my death. 

My father followed Susannah, with his 
night-gown across his arm, with nothing 
more than his breeches on ; fastened, through 
haste, with but a single button ; and that 
button, through haste, thrust only half into 
the buttonhole. 

She has not forgot the name ? cried 

my father, half-opening the door. No, 

no, said the curate, with a tone of intelli- 
gence. And the child is better, cried 

Susannah. And how does your mis- 
tress? As well, said Susannah, as can 

be expected. Pish ! said my father, the 

button of his breeches slipping out of the 
button-hole ; — so that whether the interjec- 
tion was levelled at Susannah or the button- 
hole ; — whether Pish was an interjection 
of contempt, or an interjection of modesty, 
is a doubt ; and must be a doubt till I shall 
have time to write the three following 
favorite chapters ; that is, my chapter of 
rhnmber-maids, my chapter of pishes, an 
my chanter of button-holes. 



All the light I am able to give the reaoe? 
at present is this, That the moment my 
father cried Pish! he whisk'd himself about, 
— and with his breeches held up by one 
hand, and his night-gown thrown across 
the arm of the other, he returned along the 
gallery to bed, something slower than he 
came. 



CHAP. XV. 

I wish I could write a chapter upon 
sleep. 

A fitter occasion could never have pre- 
sented itself, than what this moment offers, 
when all the curtains of the family are 
drawn, — the candles put out, — and no crea- 
ture's eyes are open but a single one — for 
the other has been shut these twenty years, 
of my mother's nurse. 

It is a fine subject. 

And yet, as fine as it is, I would under- 
take to write a dozen chapters upon button- 
holes, both quicker and with more fame, 
than a single chapter upon this. 

Button holes ! there is something lively 
in the very idea of 'em; — and trust me, 
when I get amongst 'em, — you gentry with 
great beards, look as grave as you will, — 
I'll make merry work with my button-holes, 
— I shall have 'em all to myself, — 'tis a 
maiden subject, — I shall run foul of no man's 
wisdom .or fine saying in it. 

But for sleep, — I know I shall make 
nothing of it before I begin ; — I am no 
dab at your fine sayings, in the first place ; 
— and in the next, I cannot for my soul set 
a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell 
the world, — 'tis the refuge of the unfortu- 
nate, — the enfranchisement of the prisoner, 
— the downy lap of the hopeless, the weary, 
and the broken-hearted ; nor could I set out 
with a lie in my mouth, by affirming that 
of all the soft and delicious functions of our 
nature, by which the great Author of it, in 
his bounty, has been pleased to recompense 
the sufferings wherewith his justice and his 
good pleasure has wearied us, — that this is 
the chiefest (I know pleasures worth ten <^f 

. — or what a happiness it is to n«n, 
the anxieties and passions of the foy 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



.27 



are over, and he lies down upon his back, 
that his soul shall be so seated within him, 
that whichever way she turns her eyes, the 
heavens shall look calm and sweet above 
her, — no desire, — or fear, — or doubt, that 
troubles the air; nor any difficulty, past, 
present, or to come, that the imagination 
may not pass over without offence, in that 
6weet secession. 

"God's blessing," said Sancho Panca, 
'• be upon the man who first invented this 
" self-same thing called Sleep : — it covers 

"a man all over like a cloak." Now 

there is more to me in this, and it speaks 
warmer to my heart and affections, than all 
the dissertations squeez'd out of the heads 
of the learned together upon the subject. 

— Not that I altogether disapprove of 
what Montaigne advances upon it; — 'tis 
admirable in its way : — (I quote by mem- 
ory.) 

The world enjoys other pleasures, says 
he, as they do that of sleep, without tasting 
or feeling it as it slips and passes by. — 
We should study and ruminate upon it, in 
order to render proper thanks to him who 

grants it to us. For this end, I cause 

myself to be disturbed in my sleep, that I 
may the better and more sensibly relish 

it : and yet I see few, says he again, 

who live with less sleep, when need re- 
quires : my body is capable of a firm, but 
not of a violent and sudden agitation, — I 
evade of late all violent exercises, — I am 
never weary with walking : — but from my 
youth, I never liked to ride upon pavements. 
I love to lie hard and alone, and even with- 
out my wife. This last word may stag- 
ger the faith of the world ; — but remember, 
" La Vraisemblance," (as Bayle says in the 
affair of Liceti) " n'est pas toujours du Cote 
" de la Verite." And so much for sleep. 



CHAP. XVI. 

If my wife will but venture him, — bro- 
ther Toby, Trismegistus shall be dress'd 
and brought down to us, whilst you and I 
are getting our breakfast together. 

Go, tell Susannah, Obadiah, to step 
here. 



She is run up-stairs, answered Obadiah, 
this very instant, sobbing and crying, and 
wringing her hands as if her heart would 
break. 

We shall have a rare month of it, said 
my father, turning his head from Obadiah, 
and looking wistfully in my uncle Toby's 
face for some time, — we shall have a devil- 
ish month of it, brother Toby, said my 
father, setting his arms a-kimbo, and shak- 
ing his head: fire, water, women, wind, — 

brother Toby! 'Tis some misfortune, 

quoth my uncle Toby. That it is, cried 

my father, — to have so many jarring ele- 
ments breaking loose, and riding triumph 
in every corner of a gentleman's house. — 
Little boots it to the peace of a family, 
brother Toby, that you and I possess our- 
selves, and sit here silent and unmov'd, — 
whilst such a storm is whistling over our 
heads. — 

And what's the matter, Susannah? 

They have called the child Tristram ; — and 
my mistress is just got out of an hysteric 

fit about it. kNo ! — 'tis not my fault, said 

Susannah, — I told him it was Tristram 
gistus. 

Make tea for yourself, brother Toby 

said my father, taking down his hat ; — bul 
how different from the sallies and agitations 
of voice and members which a common 
reader would imagine ! 

For he spake in the sweetest modulation, 
and took down his hat with the genteeles* 
movement of limbs, that ever affliction har- 
monized and attuned together. 

Go to the bowling-green for Corporal 
Trim, said my uncle Toby, speaking to 
Obadiah, as soon as my father left the room. 



chap. xvii. 

When the misfortune of my Nose fell so 
heavily upon my father's head, — the reader 
remembers that he walked instantly up 
stairs, and cast himself down upon his bed; 
and from hence, unless he has a great in- 
sight into human nature, he will be apt to 
expect a rotation of the same ascend ini? 
and descending movements from him, upon 
this misfortune of my Name. — No. 

The different weight, dear Sir, — nav 



128 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



even the different package of two vexations 
of the same weight, — makes a very wide dif- 
ference in our manners of bearing and get- 
ung through with them. — It is not half an 
Mour ago, when (in the great hurry and pre- 
cipitation of a poor Devil's writing for daily 
bread) I threw a fair sheet, which I had 
just finished, and carefully wrote out, slap 
into the fire, instead of the foul one. 

Instantly I snatched off my wig, and 
threw it perpendicularly, with all imagina- 
ble violence, up to the top of the room: — 
indeed I caught it as it fell : — but there 
was an end of the matter ; nor do I think 
any thing else in Nature would have given 
such immediate ease. She, dear goddess, 
by an instantaneous impulse, in all provok- 
ing cases, determines us to a sally of this 
or that member, — or else she thrusts us into 
this or that place, or posture of the body, 
we know not why : — but mark, Madam, we 
live amongst riddles and mysteries: — the 
most obvious things which come in our 
way have dark sides, which the quickest 
sight cannot penetrate into : and even the 
clearest and most exalted understandings 
amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a 
loss in almost every cranny of Nature's 
works : so that this, like a thousand other 
things, falls out for us in a way, which 
though we cannot reason upon it, yet we 
find the good of it, may it please your Rev- 
erences and your Worships, — and that's 
enough for us. 

Now, my father could not lie down with 

this affliction for his life, — nor could he 

carry it up stairs like the other ; — he 

walked composedly out with it to the fish- 

t pond. 

Had my father leaned his head upon his 
hanu, and reasoned an hour which way to 
have gone, — Reason, with all her force, 
could not have directed him to any thing 
like it: there is something, Sir, in fish- 
ponds : — but what it is, I leave to system- 
builders and fish-pond-diggers betwixt 'em 
to find out ; — but there is something, under 
the first disorderly transport of the humors, 
so unaccountably becalming in an orderly 
end a short walk towards one of them, that 
I have often wondered that neither Pytha- 
goras, nor Plato, nor Solon, nor Lycurgus, 
nor Mahomet, nor any one of your noted 
.awgivers, ever gave order about them. 



CHAP. XVIIL 



Your Honor, said Trim, shutting the 
parlor-door before he began to speak, has 
heard, I imagine, of this unlucky accident. 

O yes, Trim, said my uncle Toby, and 

it gives me great concern. 1 am heartily 

concerned too ; but I hope your Honor, re- 
plied Trim, will do me the justice to be- 
lieve, that it was not in the least owing to 

me. To thee, — Trim? — cried my uncle 

Toby, looking kindly in his face, — 'twas 
Susannah's and the curate's folly betwixt 

them, What business could they have 

together, an' please your Honor, in the gar- 
den? In the gallery thou meanest, re- 
plied my uncle Toby. 

Trim found he was upon a wrong scent, 

and stopped short with a low bow. Two 

misfortunes, quoth the Corporal to himself, 
are twice as many at least as are needful 
to be talked over at one time ; — the mis- 
chief the cow has done in breaking into the 
fortifications, may be told his Honor here- 
after. Trim's casuistry and address, un- 
der the cover of his low bow, prevented all 
suspicion in my uncle Toby; so he went 
on with what he had to say to Trim as fol- 
lows : 

For my own part, Trim, though I 

can see little or no difference betwixt my 
nephew's being called Tristram or Trisme- 
gistus; — yet as the thing sits so near my 
brother's heart, Trim, — I would freely have 
given a hundred pounds rather than it 

should have happened. A hundred pounds, 

an' please your Honor ! replied Trim, — I 

would not give a cherry-stone to boot. 

Nor would I, Trim, upon my own account, 
quoth my uncle Toby; — but my brother, 
whom there is no arguing with in this case, 
— maintains that a great deal more depends, 
Trim, upon christian names than what ig- 
norant people imagine ! — for he says there 
never was a great or heroic action per- 
formed, since the world began, by one called 
Tristram. — Nay, he will have it, Trim, that 
a man can neither be learned, or wise, or 

brave. 'Tis all fancy, an' please your 

Honor: — I fought just as well, replied the 
Corporal, when the regiment called me 
Trim, as when they called me James But- 
ler. And for my own part, said my uncle 

Toby, though I should blush to boast of 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



129 



myself, Trim: — yet, had my name been 
Alexander, I could have done no more at 
Namur than my duty. Bless your Hon- 
or ! cried Trim, advancing three steps as 
he spoke, does a man think of his christian 

name when he goes upon the attack J 

Or when he stands in the trench, Trim 1 

cried my uncle Toby, looking firm. Or 

when he enters a breach 1 said Trim, push- 
ing in between two chairs. Or forces 

the lines? cried my uncle, rising up, and 

pushing his crutch like a pike, Or 

facing a platoon] cried Trim, presenting 

his stick like a firelock. Or when he 

marches up the glacis] cried my uncle 
Toby, looking warm and setting his foot 
upon his stool. 



CHAP. XIX. 

My father was returned fiom ins walk to 
he fish-pond, — and opened the parlor-door 
in the very height of the attack, just as my 
uncle Toby was marching up the glacis. — 
Trim recovered his arms. — Never was my 
uncle Toby caugh", in riding at such a des- 
perate rate in his life! Alas! my uncle 
Toby ! had not a weightier matter called 
forth all the ready eloquence of my father, 
— how hadst thou then, and thy poor hobby- 
horse too, been insulted ! 

My father hung up his hat with the same 
air he took it down ; and, after giving a 
slight look at the disorder of the room, he 
took hold of one of the chairs which had 
formed the corporal's breach, and placing it 
over-against my uncle Toby, he sat down 
in it, and, as soon as the tea-things were 
taken avvay, and the door shut, he broke out 
into a Lamentation as follows : 

MY FATHER'S LAMENTATION. 

It is in vain longer, said my father, ad- 
dressing himself as much to Ernulphus's 
curse, which was laid upon the corner of 
the chimney-piece, — as to my uncle Toby, 
who sat under it ; — it is in vain longer, said 
my father, in the most querulous monotony 
imaginable, to struggle as I have done 
against this most uncomfortable of human 
persuasions. — I see it plainly, that eithe 
R 



for my own sins, brother Toby, or the sins 
and follies of the Shandy fim ily, Heaven 
has thought fit to draw forth the heaviest 
of its artillery against me; ;tnd that the 
prosperity of my child is the point upon 
which the whole force >f it is directed to 
play. — Such a thing woi Id baiter the whole 
universe about our ears, brother Shandy, 
said my uncle Toby, if it was so. Un- 
happy Tristram ! child of wrath ! child of 
decrepitude ! interruption ! mistake ! and 
discontent! What one misfortune or dis- 
aster in the book of embryotic evils, that 
could unmechanize thy frame, or entangle 
thy filaments, which has not fallen upon thy 
head, or even thou earnest into the world ; 
what evils in thy passage into it! — what 
evils since ! produced into being, in the de- 
cline of thy father's days, — when the pow- 
ers of his imagination and of his body were 
waxing feeble, — when radical heat and 
radical moisture, the elements which should 
have temper'd thine, were drying up; and 
nothing left to found thy stamina in, but 
negations ! — 'Tis pitiful, — brother Toby, at 
the best, and called out for all the little 
helps that care and attention on both sides 
could give it. — But how were we defeated ' 
You know the event, brother Toby ! — 'tis 
too melancholy a one to be repeated now 
— when the few animal spirits I was worth 
in the world, and with which memory, fancy, 
and quick parts should have been convev'd, 
— were all dispersed, confused, confounded, 
scattered, and sent to the devil ! — 

Here then was the time to have put a 
stop to this persecution against him, — and 
tried an experiment at least, whether calm- 
ness and serenity of mind in your sister, 
with a due attention, brother Toby, to her 
evacuations and repletions, — and the rest 
of her non-naturals, might not, in the course 
of nine months' gestation, have set all things- 
to rights. — My child was bereft of these !- 
What a teasing life did she lead herself, 
and, consequently, her foetus too, with that 
nonsensical anxiety of hers about lying-in 

in town ! 1 thought my sister submitted 

w r ith the greatest patience, replied my uncle 
Toby; — I never heard her utter one fretful 

word about it. She fumed inwardly, 

cried my father; and that, let ire tell you, 
brother, was ten times worse for th ) « hild, 
— and then, what battles did si u ibiit with 



130 



me ! and what perpetual storms about the 

midwife ! There she gave vent, said my 

uncle Tohy. Vent! cried my father, 

looking- up. 

But what was all this, my dear Toby, to 
the injuries done us by my child's coming 
head-foremost into the world, when all I 
wished in this general wreck of his frame, 
was to have saved this little casket unbroke, 
unrifled ! — 

With all my precautions, how was my 
pystem turned topsy-turvy in the womb 
with my child ! his head exposed to the 
hand of violence, and a pressure of 470 
pounds avoirdupois weight acting perpen- 
dicularly upon its apex, — that at this hour, 
'tis ninety per cent, insurance, that the fine 
net- work of the intellectual web be not rent 
and torn to a thousand tatters. ^ 

Still we could have done! — Fool, 

Coxcomb, Puppy, — give him but a Nose ; — 
'Cripple, Dwarf, Driveller, Goosecap, — 
(shape him as you will) the door of fortune 
stands open, — O Licetus! Licetus! had I been 
bless' d with a fuetus five inches long and a 
half, like thee, — Fate might have done her 
worst. 

Still, brother Toby, there was one cast 
of the die left for our child, after all : — O 
Tristram! Tristram! Tristram! 

We will send for Mr. Yorick, said my 
uncle Toby. 

You may send for whom you will, re- 
plied my father. 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

intention and resolution you may, 



CHAP. XX. 

What a rate have I gone on at, curvet- 
ing and frisking it away, two up and two 
down, for three volumes* together, without 
looking once behind, or even on one side of 
me, to see whom I trod upon ! — I'll tread 
upon no one, — quoth I to myself, when I 
mounted ■ — I'll take a good rattling gallop : 
out I'll not hurt the poorest jackass upon 
the road. — So off I set, — up one lane, — 
-down another, — through this turnpike, — 
th sr that, as if the arch-jockey of jockeys 
had got behind me. 

Now. ride at this rate with what good 



* According to the original editions. 



'tis a 



million to one you'll do some one a mis- 
chief, if not yourself. — He's flung, — he's 
off, — he's lost his seat, — he's down, — he'll 
break his neck ; — see ! if he has not gal- 
loped full among the scaffolding of '.he un- 
dertaking critics ! — he'll knock his brains 
out against some of their posts ! — he's 
bounced out ! — look, — he's now riding like 
a madcap, full tilt through a whole crowd 
of painters, fiddlers, poets, biographers, 
physicians, lawyers, logicians, players, 
schoolmen, churchmen, statesmen, soldiers, 
casuists, connoisseurs, prelates, popes, and 
engineers. — Don't fear, said I, — I'll not hurt 
the poorest jackass upon the King's high- 
way. But your horse throws dirt; see, 

you've splash'd a bishop ! — I hope in God, 
'twas only Ernulphus, said I. — But you 
have squirted full in the faces of Mess. Le 
Moyne, De Romigny, and De Marcilly, 
doctors of the Sorbonne. — That was last 
year, replied I. — But you have trod this 
moment upon a king. — Kings have bad 
times on't, said I, to be trod upon by such 
people as me. 

You have done it, replied my accuser. 

I deny it, quoth I, and so have got off; 
and here am I standing with my bridle in 
one hand, and with my cap in the other, to 

tell my story. And what is it 1 You shall 

hear in the next chapter. 



CHAP. XXI. 

As Francis the First, of France, was one 
winterly night warming himself over the 
embers of a wood-fire, and talking with His 
first minister of sundry things for tne good 
of the state,* — it would not be amiss, said* 
the king, stirring up the embers with his 
cane, if this good understanding betwixt 
ourselves and Switzerland was a little 

strengthened. There is no end, Sire, 

replied the minister, in giving money to 
these people, — they would swallow up the 

treasury of France Poo ! poo ! answered 

the king, — there are more ways, Mons. le 
Premier, of bribing states, besides that of 
giving money; — I'll pay Switzerland the 



* Vide Menagiana. Vol. I 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 



is: 



Honor of standing godfather for my next 

child. Your majesty, said the minister, 

in so doing, would have all the grammari- 
ans in Europe upon your back; — Switzer- 
land, as a republic, being a female, can in 

no construction be godfather. She may 

be godmother, replied Francis, hastily; — so, 
announce my intentions by a courier to- 
morrow morning. 

I am astonishea, said Francis the First 
(that day fortnight), speaking to his minis- 
ter as he entered the closet, that* we have 

had no answer from Switzerland. -Sire, 

I wait upon you this moment, said Mons. le 
Premier, to lay before you my dispatches 

upon that business. They take it kindly, 

said the king. They do, Sire, replied the 

minister, and have the highest sense of the 
honor your majesty has done them ■, — but the 
republic, as godmother, claims her right, in 
this case, of naming the child. 

In all reason quoth the king ; — she will 
christen him Francis, or Henry, or Lewis, 
or some other name that she knows will be 
agreeable to us. Your majesty is de- 
ceived, replied the minister.-^-I have this 
hour received a dispatch from our resident, 
with the determination of the republic on 
that point also. — And what name has the 
republic fixed upon for the Dauphin? Shad- 
rach, Meshech, Abed-nego, replied the min- 
ister. By Saint Peter's girdle, I will 

have nothing to do with the Swiss, cried 
Francis the First, pulling up his breeches, 
and walking hastily across the floor. 

Your majesty, replied the minister calmly, 
cannot bring yourself off. 

We'll pay them in money, — said the 
king. 

Sire, there are not sixty thousand crowns 

in the treasury, answered the minister. 

I'll pawn the best jewel in my crown, quoth 
Francis the First. 

Your honor stands pawned already in this 
matter, answered Monsieur le Premier. 

Then, Mons. le Premier, said the king, by 
— we'll go to war with 'em. 



chap. xxn. 

Albeit, gentle reader, I have lusted 
earnestly, and endeavored carefully (ac- 



cording to the measure of suon a slender 
skill as God has vouchsafed me, and as 
convenient leisure from other occasions of 
needful profit and healthful pastime havp 
permitted) that these little books which I 
here put into thy hands, might stand instead 
of many bigger books, — yet have I carrion 
myself towards thee in such fanciful guise 
of careless distort, that right sore am 1 
ashamed now to entreat thy lenity serious- 
ly, — in beseeching thee to believe it of me. 
that, in the story of my father and his chris- 
tian names, — I have no thoughts of tread- 
ing upon Francis the First, — nor, in the af- 
fair of the nose, — upon Francis the Ninth, 
— nor, in the character of my uncle Toby, 
of characterizing the militating spirits ot 
my country ; — the wound upon his groin 
is a wound to every comparison of that 
kind : — nor by Trim, — that I meant the 
Duke of Ormond, — or that my book is 
wrote against predestination, or free will, 
or taxes; — if 'tis wrote against any thing, 
— 'tis wrote, an't please your Worships, 
against the Spleen ! in order, by a more 
frequent and a more convulsive elevation 
and depression of the diaphragm, and the 
succussations of the intercostal and abdomi- 
nal muscles in laughter, to drive the gall 
and other bitter juices from the gall-blad- 
der, liver, and sweet-bread of his majes- 
ty's subjects, with all the inimicitious pas- 
sions which belong to them, down into their 
duodenums. 



CHAP. XXIII. 

But can the thing be undone, Yorick? 
said my father : — for in my opinion, con- 
tinued he, it cannot. I am a vile canonist, 

replied Yorick; but of all evils, holding 

suspense to be the most tormenting, we 
shall at least' know the worst of this matter. 
— I hate these great dinners, said my fathei. 

The size of the dinner is not the point, 

answered Yorick, — we want, Mr. Shandy, 
to dive into the bottom of this doubt, wheth- 
er the name can be changed n* not ; — and 
as the beards of so many commissaries, ofn 
cials, advocates, proctors, registers, and of 
the most eminent of our school -divines, and 
others, are all to meet in the middle of 



t32 



LIFE AND 



one table, and Didius has so pressingly in- 
vited you, — who, in your distress would 
miss such an occasion 1 All that is requi- 
site, continued Yorick, is to apprize Didius, 
and let him manage a conversation after 
dinner so as to introduce the subject. — 
Then my brother Toby, cried my father, 
clapping his two hands together, shall go 
with us. 

Let my old tie-wig, quoth my uncle 

Toby, and my laced regimentals, be hung 
to the fire all night, Trim. 



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CHAP. XXV. 





No doubt, Sir, — there is a whole 

chapter wanting here, — and a chasm of ten 
pages made in the book by it; — but the 
bookbinder is neither a fool, nor a knave, 
nor a puppy, — nor is the book a jot m^re 
imperfect (at least upon that score) ; — but, 
on the contrary the book is more perfect 
and complete by wanting the chapter, than 
having it, as I shall demonstrate to your 
Reverences in this manner. — I question 
first, by the bye, whether the same experi- 
ment might not be made as successfully 
upon sundry other chapters, — but there is no 
end, an' please your Reverences, in trying 
experiments upon chapters, — we have had 

enough of it; so there's an end of that 

matter. 

But before I begin my demonstration, let 
me only tell you, that the chapter which I 
have torn out, and which otherwise you 
would all have been reading just now in- 
stead of this, — was the description of my 
father's, my uncle Toby's, Trim's, and 
Obadiah's setting out and journeying to the 
visitation at ****. 

We'll go in the coach, said my father. — 
Prithee, have the arms been altered, Oba- 
Jiah? — It would have made my story much 
better to have begun with telling you that 
at the time my mother's arms were added 
to the Shandy's, when the coach was re- 
painted upon my father's marriage, it had 
eu rtLen out, that the coach-painter, whether 



OPINIONS 

by performing all his works with the lefi- 
hand, like Turphilius the Roman, or Hans 
Holbein of Basil, — or whether 'twas more 
from the blunder of his head than hand, — 
or whether, lastly, it was from the sinister 
turn which every thing relating to our fam- 
ily was apt to take, — it so fell out, however, 
to our reproach, that instead of the bend- 
dexter, which, since Harry the Eighth's 
reign, was honestly our due, — a bend-sinis- 
ter, by some of these fatalities, had been 
drawn quite across the field of the Shan- 
dy arms. 'Tis scarce credible that the 
mind of so wise a man as my father was, 
could be so much incommoded with so small 
a matter. The word coach, — let it be 
whose it would, — or coach-man, or coach- 
horse, or coach-hire, could never be named 
in the family, but he constantly complained 
of carrying this vile mark of illegitimacy 
upon the door of his own : he never once 
was able to step into the coach, or out of it, 
without turning round to take a view of the 
arms, and making a vow at the same time, 
that it was the last time he would ever set 
his foot in it again, till the bend-sinister 
was taken out; — but, like the affair of the 
hinge, it was one of the many things which 
the Destinies had set down in their books 
ever to be grumbled at (and in wiser fami- 
lies than ours) — but never to be mended. 

Has the bend-sinister been Drush'd 

out, I say x . said my father. There haa 

been nothing brush'd out, Sir, answered 

Obadiah, but the lining. We'll go o 1 

horseback, said my father, turning to 
Yorick. Of all things in the world, ex- 
cept politics, the clergy know the least of 

heraldry, said Yorick. No matter for 

that, cried my father ; I should be sorry to 
appear with a blot in my escutcheon before 

them. Never mind the bend-sinister, 

said my uncle Toby, putting on his tie-wig. 

No, indeed, said my father: you may go 

with my aunt Dinah to a visitation with a 

bend-sinister, if you think fit. My poor 

uncle Toby blushed. My father was vexed 

at himself. No, — my dear brothei Toby, 

said my father, changing his tone ; but tne 
damp of the coach-lining about my loins, 
may give me the sciatica again, as it dici 
December, January, and February, last 
winter: so, if you please, you shall ride my 
wife's pad ; — and, as you are to preach. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



j 33 



Homenas, I should have said, are g«>od 
notes ; — but it was so perpendicular a pre- 
cipice, — so wholly cut off from the rest of 
the work, that, by the first note I humm'd, 
I found myself flying into the other world, 
and from thence discovered the vale from 
whence I came, so deep, so low, and dis- 
mal, that I shall never have the heart to 
descend into it again. 

0^7= A dwarf who brings a standard along 
with him to measure his own size, — take 
my word, is a dwarf in more articles than 
one. — And so much for tearing out of chap- 
ters. 



CHAP. XXVI. 

— See, if he is not cutting it all into 

slips ! and giving them about him to 

light their pipes! 'Tis abominable, an- 



Yorick, you had better make the best of 
your way before, and leave me to take care 
of my brother Toby, and to follow at our 
own rates. 

Now, the chapter I was obliged to tear 
out, was the description of this cavalcade, 
in which corporal Trim and Obadiah, upon 
two coach-horses abreast, led the way as 
slow as a patrol, — whilst my uncle Toby, 
in his laced regimentals and tie-wig, kept 
his rank with my father, in deep roads and 
dissertations alternately, upon the advan- 
tage of learning and arms, as each could 
get the start. 

But the painting of this journey, 

upon reviewing it, appears to be so much 
above the style and manner of any thing 
else I have been able to paint in this book, 
that it could not have remained in it, with- 
out depreciating every other scene, and 
destroying, at the same time, that neces- 
sary equipoise and balance (whether of good 

or bad) betwixt chapter and chapter, from'swered Didius. It should not go un- 

whence the just proportions and harmony noticed, said Doctor Kysarci us: O^T" he 

of the whole work result. For my own j was of the Kysarcii of the Low Countries, 
part, I am but just set up in ttie business, so Methinks, said Didius, half rising from 
know little about it; — but, in my opinion, 'his chair, in order to remove a bottle and a 
to write a book, is for all the world like j tall decanter, which stood in a direct line 
humming a song; — be but in tune with .betwixt him and Yorick, — you might have 
yourself, Madam, 'tis no matter how high spared this sarcastic stroke, and have hit 
or how low you take it. i upon a more proper place, Mr. Yorick ; — or 

— This is the reason, may it please your at least upon a more proper occasion to 
Reverences, that some of the lowest and ; have shown your contempt of what we have 
flattest compositions pass off very well — (as ibeen about. If the sermon is of no better 
Yorick told my uncle Toby one night) by 

siege. My uncle Toby looked brisk at 

the sound of the word siege; but could 
make neither head nor tail of it. 

I'm to preach at court next Sunday, said 

Homenas: — run over my notes: so I j light their pipes with afterwards. 

humm'd over Doctor Homenas's notes ; — I 1 have got him fast hung up, quoth 

the modulation's very well ; — 'twill do, Ho- Didius to himself, upon one of the two horns 
menas, if it holds on at this rate; — so on I of my dilemma; — let him get off as he can. 
humm'd, — and a tolerable tune I thought I have undergone such unspeakable tor- 
it was; and to this hour, may it please your ments, in bringing forth this sermon, quoth 
Reverences, had never found out how low, Yorick, upon this occasion, — that I declare, 
how flat, how spiritless and jejune it was, Didius, I would suffer martyrdom, — and. 
but that, all of a sudden, up started an air j if it was possible, my horse with me, h 
in the middle of it, so fine, so rich, so heav- [thousand times over, before I would si< 
enly, — it carried my soul up with it into the down and make such another : I was dehv- 
ither world : now had I (as Montaigne com- : ered of it at the wrong end of me ; — n 
plained in a parallel accident) — had I found came from my head instead of my heart:— 
.he declivity easy, or the ascent accessible, and it is for the pain it gave me, both in the 

-o^.rtes I had been outwitted. — Your notes, j writing and preaching of it, that 1 revengo 

12 



worth than to light pipes with, — 'twas cer- 
tainly, Sir, not good enough to be preached 
before so learned a body ; and, if 'twas good 
enough to be preached before so learned a 
body, — 'twas certainly, Sir, too good to 



I&4 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



myself of it in this manner. To preach, to 

show the extent of our reading, or the sub- 
tleties of our wit, — to parade it in the eyes 
of the vulgar with the beggarly accounts 
of a little learning, tinsell'd over with a few 
words, which glitter, but convey little light 
and less warmth, — is a dishonest use of the 
poor single half hour in a week which is 
Dut into our hands : — 'tis not preaching the 
gospel, — but ourselves. — For my own part, 
continued Yorick, I had rather direct five 
words point-blank to the heart. 

As Yorick pronounced the word point- 
blank, my uncle Toby rose up to say some- 
thing upon projectiles, — when a single 
word, and no more, uttered from the oppo- 
site side of the table, drew every one's ears 
towards it: — a word of all others in the 
dictionary the last in that place to be ex- 
pected : — a word I am ashamed to write, — 
yet must be written, must be read ; — illegal, 
uncanonical, — guess ten thousand guesses, 
multiplied into themselves, — rack, — torture 
your invention for ever, you're where you 
was. — In short, I'll tell it in the next 
liippter. 



CHAP. XXVII. 



Zounds ! 



Z ds! cried Phutatorius, 

partly to himself, — and yet high enough to 
be heard ; — and, what seemed odd, 'twas 
uttered in a construction of look, and in a 
tone of voice, somewhat between that of 
a man in amazement, and one in bodily 
pain. 

One or two who had very nice ears, and 
could distinguish the expression and mix- 
ture of the two tones as plainly as a third 
or a fifth, or any other chord in music, — 
were the most puzzled and perplexed with 
it. — The concord was good itself; — but 
then 'twas quite out of the key, and no way 
applicable to the subject started : — so that, 
with all their knowledge, they could not 
tell what in the world to make of it. 

Others, who knew nothing of musical 
expression, and merely lent their ears to 
r,he plain import of the word, imagined that 
Phutatorius, who was somewhat of a chol 



eric spirit, was just going to snatch the 
cudgels out of Didius's hands, in oider to 
bemaul Yorick to some purpose ; — and that 

the desperate monosyllable Z ds, was 

the exordium to an oration, which, as they 
judged from the sample, presaged but a 
rough kind of handling of him ; so that my 
uncle Toby's good-nature felt a pang for 
what Yorick was about to undergo. But 
seeing Phutatorius stop short, without any 
attempt or desire to go on, — a third party 
began to suppose, that it was no more than 
an involuntary respiration, casually forming 
itself into the shape of a twelve-penny oath, 
— without the sin or substance of one. 

Others, and especially one or two who 
sat next him, looked upon it, on the con- 
trary, as a real and substantial oath, pro- 
pensely formed against Yorick, to whom he 
was known to bear no good liking; — which 
said oath, as my father philosophized upon 
it, actually lay fretting and fuming at that 
very time in the upper regions of Phutato- 
rius's purtenance; and so was naturally, 
and according to the due course of things, 
first squeezed out by the sudden influx of 
blood which was driven into the right ven- 
tricle of Phutatorius's heart, by the stroke 
of surprise which so strange a theory of 
preaching had excited. 

How finely we argue upon mistaker 
facts ! 

There was not a soul busied in all these 
various reasonings upon the monosyllable 
which Phutatorius uttered, — who did not 
take this for granted, proceeding upon it as 
from an axiom, namely, that Phutatorius's 
mind was intent upon the subject of debate 
which was arising between Didius and 
Yorick; and indeed, as he looked first to- 
wards the one, and then towards the other, 
with the air of a man listening to what 
was going forwards, — who would riot have 
thought the same ? But the truth was, that 
Phutatorius knew not one word or one 
syllable of what, was passing; — but his 
whole thoughts and attention were taken 
up with a transaction which was going 
forwards at that very instant within die 
precincts of his own Galligaskins, and in a 
part of them, where of all others he stood 
most interested to watch accidents : so that, 
| notwithstanding he looked with all the at 
Itention in the world, and had gradually 



screwed up every nerve and muscle in his 
face to the utmost pitch the instrument, 
would bear, in order, as it was thought, to 
give a sharp reply to Yorick, who sat over- 
against him, — yet, I say, was Yorick never 
once in any one domicil of Phutatorius's 
brain ; — but the true cause of his exclama- 
tion lay at xeast a yard below. 

This I will endeavor to explain to you 
with all imaginable decency. 

You must be informed then, that Gastri- 
pheres, who had taken a turn into the 
kitchen "*a little before dinner, to see how 
things went on, — observing a wicker-basket 
of fine chestnuts standing upon the dresser, 
had ordered that a hundred or two of them 
might be roasted and sent in as soon as 
dinner was over ; — Gastripheres enforcing 
his orders about them, that Didius, but 
Phutatorius especially, were particularly 
fond of 'em. 

About two minutes before the time that 
my uncle Toby interrupted Yorick's ha- 
rangue, — Gastripheres's chestnuts were 
brought in : — and as Phutatorius's fondness 
for 'em was uppermost in the waiter's head, 
he laid them directly before Phutatorius, 
wrapt up hot in a clean damask napkin. 

Now, whether it was physically impossi- 
ble, with half a dozen hands all thrust into 
the napkin at a time, — but that some one 
chestnut, of more life and rotundity than 
the rest, must be put in motion, — it so fell j 
out, however, that one was actually sent 
rolling off the table ; and as Phutatorius sat 
straddling under, — it fell perpendicularly 
into that particular aperture of Phutatorius's 
breeches, for which, to the shame and in- 
delicacy of our language be it spoke, there 
is no chaste word throughout all Johnson's 
Dictionary : — let it suffice to say, — it was 
that particular aperture which, in all good 
societies, the laws of decorum do strictly 
require, like the temple of Janus (in peace 
at least) to be universally shut up. 

The neglect of this punctilio in Phuta- 
torius (which by the bye should be a warn- 
ing to all mankind) had opened a door to 
this accident. — 

Accident I call it, in compliance to a re- 
ceived mode of speaking ; — but in no oppo- 
sition to the opinion either of Acrites or 
Mythogeras in this matter ; I know they 
were both prepossessed and fully persuaded 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 135 

of it, — and are so to this hour, That there 
was nothing of accident in the whole event, 
— but that the chestnut's taking mat pai 
ticular course, and in a manner of its own 
accord, — and then falling with ail its heat 
directly into that one particular place, anu 
no other, — was a real judgment upon Phu- 
tatorius for that filthy and obscene treatise 
de Concubinis retinendis, which Phutato- 
rius had published about twenty years ago, 
— and was that identical week going to 
give the world a second edition of. 

It is not my business to dip my pen ir» 
this controversy: much, undoubtedly, may 
be wrote on both sides of the question : — 
all that concerns me, as an historian, is to 
represent the matter of fact, and render it 
credible to the reader, that the hiatus in 
Phutatorius's breeches was sufficiently wide 
to receive the chestnut; — and that the 
chestnut, somehow or other, did fall per- 
pendicularly, and piping hot, into it, without 
Phutatorius's perceiving it, or any one else 
at that time. 

The genial warmth which the chestnut 
imparted, was not undetectable for the first 
twenty or five-and-twenty seconds; — and 
did no more than gently solicit Phutato- 
rius's attention towards the part : — but the 
heat gradually increasing, and, in a few 
seconds more, getting beyond the point of 
all sober pleasure, and then advancing with 
all speed into the regions of pain, the soul 
of Phutatorius, together with all his ideas, 
his thoughts, his attention, his imagination, 
judgment, resolution, deliberation, ratioci- 
nation, memory, fancy, with ten battalions 
of animal spirits, all tumultuously crowded 
down, through different defiles and circuits, 
to the place in danger, leaving all his upper 
regions, as you may imagine, as empty as 
my purse. 

With the best intelligence which all 
these messengers could bring him back, 
Phutatorius was not able to dive into the 
secret of what was going forward below : 
nor could he make any kind of conjecture 
what the devil was the matter with it 
However, as he knew not, what the true 
cause might turn out, he deemed it im»?t 
prudent, in the situation he was m at pres- 
ent, — to bear it, if possible, like a Stoic* 
which, with the help of some wry faces and 
compursions of the mouth, he had ctitainlv 



136 LIFE AND 

accomplished, had his imagination contin- 
ued neuter : — but the sallies of the imagina- 
tion are ungovernable in all things of this 
kind : — a thought instantly darted into his 
mind, that though the anguish had the 
sensation of glowing heat, — it might, not- 
withstanding that, be a bite as well as a 
burn; and if so, that possibly a newt or an 
asker, or some such detested reptile, had 
crept up, and was fastening his teeth ; — the 
horrid idea of which, with a fresh glow of 
pain arising that instant from the chestnut, 
seized Phutatorius with a sudden panic, — 
and in the first terrifying disorder of the 
passion, it threw him, as it has done the 
best generals upon earth, quite off his 
guard : — the effect of which was this, that 
he leap'd incontinently up, uttering as he 
rose that interjection of surprise so much 
descanted upon, with the apposiopestic 

break after it, marked thus, Z ds! — 

which, though not strictly canonical, was 
still as little as any man could have said 
upon the occasion ; — and which, by the bye, 
whether canonical or not, Phutatorius could 
no more help than he could the cause of it. 

Though this has taken up some time in 
the narrative, it took up little more time in 
the transaction than just to allow time for 
Phutatorius to draw forth the chestnut, and 
throw it down with violence upon the floor, 
— and for Yorick to rise from his chair, and 
pick the chestnut up. 

It is curious to observe the triumph of 
slight incidents over the mind. — What in- 
credible weight they have in forming and 
governing our opinions, both of men and 
things ! — that trifles, light as air, shall waft 
a belief into the soul, and plant it so im- 
movably within it, — that Euclid's demon- 
strations, could they be brought to batter it 
in breach, should not all have power to 
overthrow it ! 

Yorick, I said, picked up the chestnut 
which Phutatorius's wrath had flung down: 
— the action was trifling; — I am ashamed 
to account for it : — he did it, — for no reason, 
but that he thought the chestnut not a jot 
worse for the adventure; — and that he 
thought a good chestnut worth stooping 
for. — But this incident, trifling as it was, 
wrought dilFerently in Phutatorius's head. 
Me considered this act of Yorick's, in get- 



OPINIONS 

ting off his chair and picking up the chest 
nut, as a plain acknowledgment in him, 
that the chestnut was originally his ; — and, 
in course, that it must have been the owner 
of the chestnut, and no one else, who could 
have played him such a prank with it 
What greatly confirmed him in this opinion, 
was this, That the table being parallelo- 
gramical, and very narrow, it afforded a 
fair opportunity for Yorick, who sat directly 
over-against Phutatorius, of slipping the 
chestnut in : — and consequently that he did 
it. The look of something more than sus- 
picion, which Phutatorius cast full upon 
Yorick as these thoughts arose, too evi- 
dently spoke his opinion ; — and as Phutato- 
rius was naturally supposed to know more 
of the matter than any person besides, his 
opinion at once became the general one ; 
and for a reason very different from any 
which have been yet given, in a little time 
it was put out of all manner of dispute. 

When great or unexpected events fall 
out upon the stage of this sublunary world, 
— the mind of man, which is an inquisitive 
kind of a substance, naturally takes a flight 
behind the scenes, to see what is the cause 
and first spring of them. — The search was 
not long in this instance. 

It was well known that Yorick had nevei 
a good opinion of the Treatise which Phu- 
tatorius had wrote, de Concubinis retinen- 
dis, as a thing which he feared had done 
hurt in the world : — and 'twas easily found 
out, that there was a mystical meaning in 
Yorick's prank, — and that his chucking the 
chestnut hot into Phutatorius's *** — *****, 
was a sarcastical fling at his book; — the 
doctrines of which, they said, had inflamed 
many an honest man in the same place. 

This conceit awaken'd Somnolentius ; — 
made Agelastes smile; — and, if you can 
recollect the precise look and air of a man's 
face intent in finding out a riddle, — it thrc vv 
Gastripheres's into that form; — and, in 
short, was thought by many to be a master- 
stroke of arch wit. 

This, as the reader has seen from one 
end to the other, was as groundless as the 
dreams of philosophy. Yorick, no doubt, as 
Shakspeare said of his ancestor, — " was a 
" man of jest," but it was temper'd with 
something which withheld % im from tha*. 



OF TRISTRAM SIIANDY. 



137 



and many other ungracious pranks, of which 
he as undeservedly bore the blame ; — but it 
was his misfortune, all his life long, to bear 
the imputation of saying- and doing a thou- 
sand things, of which (unless my esteem 
blinds me) his nature was incapable. All 
I blame him for, — or rather, all I blame and 
alternately like him for, was that singu- 
larity of his temper, which would never 
suffer him to take pains to set a story right 
with the world, however in his power. In 
every ill-usage of that sort, he acted pre- 
cisely as in the affair of his lean horse. — 
He could have explained it to his honor, but 
his spirit was above it ; and besides, he ever 
looked upon the inventor, the propagator, 
and believer, of an illiberal report, alike so 
injurious to him, — he could not stoop to tell 
his story to them ; — and so trusted to time 
and truth to do it for him. 

This heroic cast produced him inconve 
niences in many respects; — in the present, 
it was followed by the fixed resentment of 
Phutatorius, who, as Yorick had just made 
an end of his chestnut, rose up from his 
chair a second time, to let him know it ; — 
which indeed he did with a smile ; — saying 
only, — that he would endeavor not to forget 
the obligation. 

But you must mark and carefully sepa- 
rate and distinguish these two things in 
your mind : — 

— The smile was for the company ; 

— The threat was for Yorick. 



CHAP. XXVIII. 

— Can you tell me, quoth Phutatorius, 
speaking to Gastripheres, who sat next to 
him, — for one would not apply to a surgeon 
in so foolish an affair, — can you tell me, 
Gastripheres, what is best to take out the 

fire 1 Ask Eugenius, said Gastripheres. 

That greatly depends, said Eugenius, 

pretending ignorance of the adventure, 
upon the nature of the part. — If it is a 
tender part, and a part which can conve- 
niently be wrapt up, It is both the one 

and the other, replied Phutatorius, laying 

his hand as he spoke, with an emphatical 

S 



nod of his head, upon the part in question, 
and lifting up his riofht leg at the sam? 

time, to ease and ventilate it. If that is 

the case, said Eugenius, I would advise you, 
Phutatorius, not to tamper with it by anv 
means; but if you will send to the next 
printer, and trust your cure to such a sim 
pie thing as a soft sheet of paper just come 
off the press, — you need do nothing more 

than twist it round. The damp paper, 

quoth Yorick (who sat next to his friend 
Eugenius) though I know it has a refresh- 
ing coolness in it, — yet, I presume, is nc 
more than the vehicle ; — and that the oil 
and lamp-black, with which the paper is so 
strongly impregnated, does the business. 

Right, said Eugenius; and is, of any 

outward application I would venture to re- 
commend, the most anodyne and safe. 

Was it my case, said Gastripheres, as 
the main thing is the oil and lamp-black, I 
should spread them thick upon a rag-, and 

clap it on directly. That would make a 

very devil of it, replied Yorick. And 

besides, added Eugenius, it would not an- 
swer the intention, which is the extreme 
neatness and elegance of the prescription ; 
which the faculty hold to be half in half: — 
for consider, if the type is a very small one 
(which it should be) the sanative particles, 
which come into contact in this form, have 
the advantage of being spread so infinitely 
thin, and with such a mathematical equality 
(fresh paragraphs and large capitals ex- 
cepted) as no art or management of the 

spatula can come up to. It falls out very 

luckily, replied Phutatorius, that the sec- 
ond edition of my Treatise, De Concubinis 
retinendis is at this instant in the press. 
You may take any leaf of it, said Eu- 
genius; — no matter which. Provided, 

quoth Yorick, there is no bawdy in it. 

They are just now, replied Phuidtorius, 
printing off the ninth chapter ; — which is 

the last chapter but one in the book. 

Pray, what is the title of that chapter! 
said Yorick; making a respectful bow to 
Phutatorius, as he spoke. 1 think, an- 
swered Phutatorius, 'tis that de Re Concn- 
binarid. 

For Heaven's sake, keep out of that chaj> 
ter, quoth Yorick. 

By all means, — added Eugenius. 

12* 



13S 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



CHAR XXIX. 



— Now, quoth Didius, rising up, and lay- 
ing 1 his right hand, with his fingers spread, 
upon his breast, — had such a blunder about 
a christian name happened before the Re- 
formation, [It happened the day before 

yesterday, quoth my uncle Toby to himself] 
— and when baptism was administer'd in 
Latin, — ['Twas all in English, said my un- 
cle] — many things might have coincided 
with it ; and upon the authority of sundry 
decreed cases, to have pronounced the bap- 
tism null, — with a power of giving the 
child a new name. — Had a priest, for in- 
stance, which was no uncommon thing, 
through ignorance of the Latin tongue, 
baptized a child of Tom-o' Smiles, in nomine 
yatrice <5f Jilia 6f spiritum sanctos, — the 
baptism was held null. 1 beg your par- 
don, replied Kysarcius; — in that case, as 
the mistake was only the terminations, the 
baptism was valid ; — and to have rendered 
it null, the blunder of the priest should 
have fallen upon the first syllable of each 
noun ; — and not, as in your case, upon the 
last. 

My father delighted in subtleties of this 
kind, and listen'd with infinite attention. 

Gastripheres, for example, continued Ky- 
sarcius, baptizes a child of John Stradling's 
in gomine Gatris, fyc. <$-c. instead of in 
nomine Patris, fyc. — Is this a baptism] — 
No, — say the ablest canonists; inasmuch as 
the radix of each word is hereby torn up, 
and the sense and meaning of them re- 
moved and changed quite to another ob- 
ject; — for gomine does not signify a name, 
nor gatris a father. What do they sig- 
nify] said my uncle Toby. Nothing at all, 

— quoth Yorick. Ergo, such a baptism 

is null, said Kysarcius. 

In course, answered Yoi i'-k, in a tone 

two parts jest and one part earnest. 

But in the case cited, continued Kysar- 
cius, where palrice is put for patris, Jilia 
tor Jilii, and so on ; — as it is a fault only in 
the declension, and the roots of the words 
continue untouch'd, the inflections of their 
brancnes, either this way or that, does not 
la any sort hinder the baptism, inasmuch 
as the same sense continues in the words 

blf before. But then, said Didius, the in- 

ention cf the priest's pronouncing them 



grammatically must have been proved ta * 
have gone along with it. Right, an- 
swered Kysarcius ; and of this, brother 
Didius, we have an instance in a decree of 

the decretals of Pope Leo the Third. 

But my brother's child, cried my uncle 
Toby, has nothing to do with the Pope ; — 
'tis the plain child of a Protestant gentle- 
man, christen'd Tristram against the wills 
and wishes both of his father and mother, 
and all who are akin to it. 

If the wills and wishes, said Kysarcius, 
interrupting my uncle Toby, of those only 
who stand related to Mr. Shandy's child, 
were to have weight in this matter, Mrs. 
Shandy, of all people, has the least to do 

in it. My uncle Toby laid down his 

pipe, and my father drew his chair still 
closer to the table, to hear the conclusion 
of so strange an introduction. 

It has not only been a question, Cap- 
tain Shandy, amongst the* best lawyers 
and civilians in this land, continued Kysar- 
cius, "Whether the mother be of kin to 
" her child ;" — but, after much dispassionate 
inquiry and jactitation of the arguments 
on all side?, — it has been adjudged for the 
negative ; — namely, " That thp mother is 
" not of kin to her child." f My father in- 
stantly clapp'd his hand upon my unclp 
Toby's mouth, under color of whispering 
in his ear ; — the truth was, he was alarmed 
for Lillibullero, — and having a great desire 
to hear more of so curious an argument, — 
he begg'd my uncle Toby, for Heaven's 

sake, not to disappoint him in it. My 

uncle Toby gave a nod, — resumed his pipe, 
and contenting himself with whistling Lil- 
libullero inwardly, — Kysarcius, Didius, and 
Triptolemus went on with the discourse as 
follows : — 

This determination, continued Kysarcius, 
how contrary soever it may seem to run to 
the stream of vulgar ideas, yet had reason 
strongly on its side, and has been put out 
of all manner of dispute from the famous 
case, known commonly by the name of the 

Duke of Suffolk's Case. It is cited in 

Brooke, said Triptolemus. And taken 

notice of by Lord Coke, added Didius. 

And you may find it in Swinburn on Tes- 
taments, said Kysarcius. 



* Vide Swinbu n on Testa;) ents. Part 7. § 8. 
t Vide Brooke? Abri<g Til. Adminu:r. N 47. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



13!l 



The case, Mr. Shandy, was this — 

In the reign of Edward the Sixth, Charles 
Duke of Suffolk having issue a son by one 
venter, and a daughter by another venter, 
made his last will, wherein he devised goods 
to his son, and died: after whose death the 
eon died also; — but without will, without 
wife, and without child ; — his mother and 
his sister by the father's side (for she was 
born of the former venter) then living. The 
mother took the administration of her son's 
goods, according to the statute of the 21st 
of Harry the eighth ; whereby it is enacted, 
That in case any person die intestate, the 
administration of his goods shall be com- 
mitted to the next of kin. 

The administration being thus (surrep- 
titiously) granted to the mother, — the sister, 
by the father's side, commenced a suit be- 
fore the Ecclesiastical Judge, alleging, 1st, 
That she herself was next of kin; and, 
2dly, That the mother was not of kin at all 
to the party deceased ; and, therefore, pray- 
ed the court, that the administration grant- 
ed to the mother might be revoked, and be 
committed unto her, as next of kin to the 
deceased, by force of the said statute. 

Hereupon, as it was a great cause, and 
much depending upon its issue, — and many 
causes of great property likely to be decided 
hi times to come, by the precedent to be 
then made, — the most learned, as well in 
the laws of this realm as in the civil law, 
were consulted together, Whether the mo- 
ther was of kin to her son, or no] — Where- 
unto not only the temporal lawyers, — but 
the church-lawyers, — the juris-consulti, — 
the jurisprudentes, — the civilians, — the 
•advocates, — the commissaries, — the judges 
of the consistory and prerogative courts of 
Canterbury and York, with the master of 
the faculties, were all unanimously of opin- 
ion, That the mother was not of* kin to her 
child. 

And what said the Duchess of Suffolk to 
it! said my uncie Toby. 

The unexpectedness of my uncle Toby's 
question, confounded Kysarcius more than 
the ablest advocate. — He stopp'd a full 
minute, looking in my uncle Toby's face 
without replying ;— and in that single 



* Mater non numeratur inter consanguineos, Bald, 
i* alt. C. de Verb, signifia 



minute Triptolemus put by him, and took 
the lead as follows : 

'Tis a ground and principle in the law 
said Triptolemus, that things do not ascend, 
but descend in it; and I make no doubt 'tis 
for this cause, that however true it is that 
the child may be of the blood and seed of 
its parents, — that the parents, nevertheless, 
are not of the blood and seed of it; inas- 
much as the parents are not begot by the 
child, but the child by the parents ; — for so 
they write, Liberi sunt de sanguine patris 
ty matris, sed pater <|* mater non sunt de 
sanguine liberorum. 

But this, Triptolemus, cried Didius, 

proves too much ; — for, from this authority 
cited, it would follow, not only what indeed 
is granted on all sides, that the mother is 
not of kin to her child, — but the father 

likewise. It is held, said Triptolemus, 

the better opinion ; because the father, the 
mother, and the child, though they be three 
persons, yet are they but (una caro*) one 
flesh ; and consequently no degree of kin- 
dred, — or any method of acquiring one in 

nature. There you push the argument 

again too far, cried Didius, — for there is no 
prohibition in nature, though there is ii. 
the Levitical law, — but that a man may 
beget a child upon his grandmother ; — in 
which case, supposing the issue a daughter, 

she would stand in relation both of But 

who ever thought, cried Kysarcius, of lying 
with his grandmother'? The young gen- 
tleman, replied Yorick, whom Selden speaks 
of, — who not only thought of it, but justi- 
fied his intention to his father by the argu- 
ment drawn from the law of retaliation : — 
" You lay, Sir, with my mother," said the 

lad; "why may not I lie with yours!" 

'Tis the argumentum commune, added 

Yorick. 'Tis as good, replied Eugenius, 

taking down his hat, as they deserve. 

The company broke up. 



CHAP. XXX. 

— And pray, said my uncle Toby, lean- 
ing upon Yorick, as he and my father were 
helping him leisurely dc wn the stairs, — 



* Vide Brooke's Abridg. tit. Administr. N <• 



140 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



don't be terrified, Madam ; this stair-case 
conversation is not so long as the last. — 
And pray, Yorick, said my uncle Toby, 
which way is this said affair of Tristram at 

length settled by these learned men 3 

Very satisfactorily, replied Yorick ; no mor- 
tal, Sir, has any concern with it; — for Mrs. 
Shandy, the mother, is nothing at all akin 
to him ; — and as the mother's is the surest 
side, — Mr. Shandy, in course, is still less 
than nothing. — In short he is not as much 
akin to him, Sir, as I am. — 

That may well be, said my father, 

shaking his head. 

Let the learned say what they will, 

there must certainly, quoth my uncle Toby, 
have been some sort of consanguinity be- 
twixt the Duchess of Suffolk and her son. 

The vulgar are of the same opinion, 
quoth Yorick, to this hour. 



CHAP. XXXI. 

Though my father was hugely tickled 
with the subtleties of these learned dis- 
courses, — 'twas still but like the anointing 
of a broken bone. — The moment he got 
home, the weight of his afflictions returned 
upon him but so much the heavier, as is 
ever the case when the staff we lean on 
slips from under us. — He became pensive, 
— walked frequently forth to the fish-pond, 
— let down one loop of his hat, — sigh'd 
often, — forbore to snap ; — and, as the hasty 
sparks of temper, which occasion snapping, 
so much assist perspiration and digestion, 
as Hippocrates tell us, — he had certainly 
fallen ill with the extinction of them, had 
not his thoughts been critically drawn off, 
and his health rescued by a fresh train of 
disquietudes left him, with a legacy of a 
thousand pounds, by my aunt Dinah. 

Mv father had scarce read the letter, 
when, taKing the thing by the right end, he 
instantly began to plague and puzzle his 
nead how to lay it out mostly to the honor 
of his family. — A hundred and fifty odd pro- 
jects took possession of his brains by turns ; 
■ -he would do this, and that, and t'other. 
-He would go to Rome ; — he would go to 
„h.w ; — he would buy stock ; — he would buy 
John Hobson's faim, — he would new fore- 



front his house, and add a new wing to 
make it even. — There was a fine water- 
mill on this side; and he would build a 
wind-mill on the other side of the river, in 
full view, to answer it. — But above all 
things in the world, he would inclose the 
great Ox-moor, and send out my brothei 
Bobby immediately upon his travels. 

But as the sum was finite, and conse- 
quently could not do every thing; — and in 
truth very few of these to any purpose, — 
of all the projects which offered themselves 
upon this occasion, the two last seemed to 
make the deepest impression ; and he would 
infallibly have determined upon both at 
once, but for the small inconvenience hinted 
at above, which absolutely put him under a 
necessity of deciding in favor either of the 
one or the other. 

This was not altogether so easy to be 
done ; for though 'tis certain my father had 
long before set his heart upon this neces- 
sary part of my brother's education, and, 
like a prudent man, had actually determined 
to carry it into execution, with the first 
money that returned from the second crea- 
tion of actions in the Mississippi-scheme, in 
which he was an adventurer ; — yet the Ox- 
moor, which was a fine, large, whinny, 
undrained, unimproved common, belonging 
to the Shandy-estate, had almost as old a 
claim upon him : he had long and affec- 
tionately set his heart upon turning it like- 
wise to some account. 

But having never hitherto been pressed 
with such a conjuncture of things as made 
it necessary to settle either the priority or 
justice of their claims, — like a wise man, 
he had refrained entering into any nice or 
critical examination about them : so that, 
upon the dismission of every other project 
at this crisis, — the two old projects, the Ox- 
moor, and my brother, divided him again ; 
and so equal a match w ere they for each 
other, as to become the occasion of no small 
contest in the old gentleman's mind, — 
which of the two should be set a-going 
first. 

People may laugh as they will ; — 

but the case was this : — 

It had ever been the custom of the family, 
and by length of time was almost become a 
matter of common right, that the eldest 
son of it should have free ingress, egress, 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



14 



ana regress into foreign parts before mar- 
riage, — not only for the sake of bettering 
his own private parts, by the benefit of ex- 
ercise and change of so much air, — but 
simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, 
by the feathei put into his cap of Waving 
been abroad. — Tantum valet, my father 
would say, quantum sonat. 

Now as this was a reasonable, and in 
course a most Christian indulgence, — to de- 
prive him of it, without why or wherefore, 
— and thereby make an example of him, as 
the first Shandy unwhirl'd about Europe in 
a post-chaise, and only because he was a 
heavy lad, — would be using him ten times 
worse than a Turk. 

On the other hand, the case of the Ox 
moor was full as hard. 

Exclusive of the original purchase-mo- 
ney, which was eight hundred pounds, — it 
had cost the family eight hundred pounds 
more in a law-suit about fifteen years be- 
fore, — besides the Lord knows what trouble 
and vexation. 

It had been moreover in possession of the 
Shandy family ever since the middle of the 
last century; and though it lay full in view 
before the house, bounded on one extremity 
by the water-mill ; and on the other by the 
projected wind-mill spoken of above ; — and 
for all these reasons seemed to have the 
fairest title of any part of the estate to the 
care and protection of the family, — yet, by 
an unaccountable fatality, common to men, 
as well as the ground they tread on, — it 
had all along most shamefully been over- 
looks ; and, to speak the truth of it, had 
suffered so much by it, that it would have 
made any man's heart have bled (Obadiah 
said) who understood the value of land, to 
have rode over it, and only seen the condi- 
tion it was in. 

However, as neither the purchasing this 
tract of ground, — nor indeed the placing 
of it where it lay, were either of them, 
properly speaking, of my father's doing, — 
he had never thought himself any way con- 
cerned in the affair — till the fifteen years 
before, when the breaking out of that 
cursed law-suit mentioned above (and which 
had arose about its boundaries) — which be- 
ing altogether my father's own act and 
deed, it naturally awakened every other 
argument in its favor ; and upon summing 



them all up together, he saw, not merely 
in interest, but in honor, he was bound to 
do something for it ; — and that now or never 
was the time. 

I think there must certainly have been a 
mixture of ill-luck in it, that the reasons 
on both sides should happen to be so equally 
balanced by each other; for though my 
father weigh'd them in all humors and con- 
ditions, spent many an anxious hour in the 
most profound and abstracted meditation 
upon what was best to be done ; — reading 
books of farming one day,— books of travels 
another, — laying aside all passion whatever, 
— viewing the arguments on both sides in 
all their lights and circumstances, — com- 
muning every day with my uncle Toby, — 
arguing with Yorick, and talking over the 
whole affair of the Ox-moor with Obadiah, 
— yet nothing in all that time appeared so 
strongly in behalf of the one, which was 
not either strictly applicable to the other, 
or at least so far counterbalanced by some 
consideration of equal weight, as to keep 
the scales even. 

For to be sure, with proper helps, and in 
the hands of some people, though the Ox- 
moor would undoubtedly have made a dif- 
ferent appearance in the world from what 
it did, or ever could do, in the condition it 
lay, — yet every tittle of this was true with 
regard to my brother Bobby, — let Obadiah 
say what he would. 

In point of interest, the contest, I own, 
art first sight, did not appear so undecisive 
betwixt them ; for whenever my father 
took pen and ink in hand, and set about 
calculating the simple expense of paring 
and burning, and fencing in the Ox- 
moor, &c. &c. — with the certain profit it 
would bring him in return, — the latter 
turned out so prodigiously in his way of 
working the account, that you would have 
sworn the Ox-moor would have carried all 
before it; for it was plain he should reap a 
hundred lasts of rape, at twenty pounds a 
last, the very first year, — besides an excel- 
lent crop of wheat the year following;—- 
and the year after that, to speak within 
bounds, a hundred, — but, in all likelihood, 
a hundred and fifty, — if not two hundred 
quarters of pease and beans, besides po- 
tatoes without end. — But then, to think h« 
was all this while breedirg uu my brother 



14S 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



tike a hog to eat them, — knocked all on the 
head again, and generally left the old gen- 
tleman in such a state of suspense, — that, 
as he often declared to my uncle Toby, — 
he knew no more than his heels what to do. 

Nobody but he who has felt it, can con- 
ceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a 
man's mind torn asunder by two projects 
of equal strength, both obstinately pulling 
in a contrary direction at the same time ; 
for, to say nothing of the havoc, which by 
a certain consequence is unavoidably made 
by it all over the finer system of the nerves, 
which you know convey the animal spirits 
and more subtle juices from the heart to the 
head, and so on, — it is not to be told in what 
a degree such a wayward kind of friction 
works upon the more gross and solid parts, 
wasting the fat and impairing the strength 
of a man, every time, as it goes backwards 
and forwards. 

My father had certainly sunk under this 
evil, as certainly as he had done under that 
of my Christian Name, had he not been 
rescued out of it, as he was out of that, by 
a fresh evil : — the misfortune of my brother 
Bobby's death. 

What is the life of man 1 Is it not to 
shift from side to s^de? — from sorrow to 
sorrowl — to button up one cause of vexa- 
tion, — and unbutton another 1 



chap. xxxn. 

From this moment I am to be considered 
as heir-apparent to the Shandy family; — 
and it is from this point, properly, that the 
story of my Life and Opinions sets out. 
With all my hurry and precipitation, I have 
been but clearing the ground to raise the 
building; — and such a building do I foresee 
it will turn out, as never was planned, and 
as never was executed, since Adam. In less 
than five minutes I shall have thrown my 
pen into the fire, and the little drop of thick 
ink which is left remaining at the bottom 
of my ink-horn, after it : — I have but half 
a score of things to do in the time ; — I have 
a thing to name, — a thing to lament, — a 
thing to hope, — a thing to promise, — and a 
thing to threaten. — I have a thing to sup- 
ine — -a thing to declare, — a thing to con- 



ceal, — a thing to choose, — and a thing to 
pray for. — This chapter, therefore, I name 
the chapter of Things, — and my next chap- 
ter to it, that is, the first chapter of my 
next volume, if I live, shall be my chapter 
upon •Whiskers, in order to keep up some 
sort of connexion in my works. 

The thing I lament is, that things have 
crowded in so thick upon me, that I have 
not been able to get into that part of my 
work, towards which I have all the way 
looked forwards with so much earnest de- 
sire ; and that is the campaigns, but espe- 
cially the amours, of my uncle Toby, the 
events of which are of so singular a nature, 
and so Cervantic a cast, that if I can so 
manage it, as to convey but the same impres- 
sions to every other brain which the occur- 
rences themselves excite m my own, — * 
will answer for it, the book shall make its 
way in the world much better than its 
master has done before it. — Oh Tristram ! 
Tristram ! can this but be once broughi 
about, — the credit which will attend thee 
as an author, shall counterbalance the many 
evils which have befallen thee as a man ; — 
thou wilt feast upon the one, — when thou 
hast lost all sense and remembrance of the 
other ! 

No wonder I itch so much as I do to get 
at these amours: — they are the choices* 
morsel of my whole story ! and when I da 
get at 'em, — assure yourselves,- good folks, 
— (nor do I value whose squeamish stomach 
takes offence at it) I shall not be at all nice 
in the choice of my words ! — and that's the 
thing I have to declare. — I shall never get 
all through in five minutes, that I fear : — 
and the thing I hope is, that your Worships 
and Reverences are not offended : — if you 
are, depend upon't I'll give you something, 
my good gentry, next year, to be offended 
at; — that's my dear Jenny's way; — but 
who my Jenny is, — and which is the right 
and which the wrong end of a woman, — 
is the thing to be concealed: — it shall he 
told you in the next chapter but die to my 
chapter of Button-holes;-- and not one 
chapter before. 

And now that you have ; ust got to the 
end of these four volumes, 1 —the thing I 
have to ask is, how you feel your heads 1 



According to the original edition* 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



143 



my own aches dismally ! — As for your 
healths, I know they are much better. — 
True Shandeism, think what you will 
against it, opens the heart and lungs ; and, 
like all those affections which partake of 
its nature, it forces the blood and other 
vital fluids of the body to run freely through 
their channels, and makes the wheel of life 
run long and cheerfully round. 

Was I left, like Sancho Panca, to choose 
my kingdom, it should not be maritime, — 
Dr a kingdom of blacks, to make a penny 
of, — no, it should be a kingdom of hearty 
aughing subjects : and as the bilious" and 
more saturnine passions, by creating dis- 
orders in the blood and humors, have as 



bad ar influence, I see, upon the body 
politic as body natural ; — and as nothing but 
a habit of virtue can fully govern those 
passions, and subject them to reason, — I 
should add to my prayer, — that God would 
give my subjects grace to be wise as they 
were merry; and then I should be the 
happiest monarch, and they the happiest 
poople, under Heaven. 

And so with this moral for the present, 
may it please your Worships and your 
Reverences, I take my leave of you till 
this time twelve-month, when (unless this 
vile cough kills me in the mean time) I'll 
have another pluck at your beards, and !uy 
open a story to the world you little dream of 



THE 

LIFE AND OPINIONS 

OF 

Kviutvzm Stiauijffi, 

GENTLEMAN. 



CHAP. I. 

IF it had not been for those two mettle- 
some tits, and that madcap of a postilion 
who drove them from Stilton to Stamford, 
the thought had never entered my head. 
He flew like lightning : — there was a slope 
of three miles and a half; — we scarce touch- 
ed the ground, — the motion was most rapid, 
— most impetuous; — 'twas communicated 
to my brain, — my heart partook of it. — " By 
"the great God of day," said I, looking 
towards the sun, and thrusting my arm out 
of the fore"- window of the chaise, as I made 
my vow, "I will lock up my study-door 
" the moment I get home, and throw the 
" key of it ninety feet below the surface, in 
" the draw-well at the back of my house." 

The London wagon confirmed me in 
my resolution ; it hung tottering upon the 
hill, scarce progressive, dragg'd, — dragg'd 
up by eight heavy beasts, — " by main 
" strength !" — quoth I, nodding ; " but your 
" betters draw the same way, and something 
" of every body's ! O rare !" 

Tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever be 
adding so much to the bulk, — so little to the 
stock ? 

Shall we for ever make new books, as 
apothecaries make new mixtures, by pour- 
ing only out of one vessel into another 1 

Are we for ever to be twisting, and un- 
twisting, the same rope] for ever in the 
same track, — for ever at the same pace? 

Shall we be destined to the days of eter- 
nity, on holydays as well as working-days, 
to be showing the relics of learning, as 
monks do the relics of their saints, — with- 
out working cue, — one single miracle with 
Jiem? 



Who made Man, with powers which dart 
him from earth to heaven in a moment : — 
that great, that most excellent, and most 
noble creature of the world — the miracle 
of nature, as Zoroaster, in his book &tpi <pv- 
gfms, called him; — the Shekinah of the 
Divine Presence^ as Chrysostom : — the 
image of God, as Moses ; — the ray of Di- 
vinity, as Plato ; — the marvel of marvels, 
as Aristotle, — to go sneaking on at this 
pitiful, — pimping, — pettifogging rate ? 

I scorn to be as abusive as Horace upon 
the occasion ; — but if there is no catachre- 
sis in the wish, and no sin in it, I wish 
from my soul, that every imitator in Great 
Britain, France, and Ireland, had the farcy 
for his pains; and that there was a good 
farcical house, large enough to hold, — ay, 
— and sublimate them, tag-rag and bob-tail, 
male and female, all together: and this 
leads me to the affair of whiskers ; — but 
by what chain of ideas, — I leave as a legacy 
in mortmain to Prudes and Tartufs, to en 
joy and make the most of. 

UPON WHISKERS. 

I'm sorry I made it; — 'twas as inconsider- 
ate a promise as ever entered a man's head. 
— A chapter upon whiskers ! alas ! the world 
will not bear it! — 'tis a delicate world; — 
but I knew not of what mettle it was made, 
— nor had I ever seen the under-written 
fragment; otherwise, as surely as noses are 
noses, and whiskers are whiskers still (let 
the world say what it will to the contrary), 
so surely would I have steered clear of this 
dangerous chapter. 



THE FRAGMENT. 

* * * * 

* * * * 



♦ — -You are half asleep, my good lady, said 
the old gentleman, taking hold of the old 
lady's hand, and giving it a gentle squeeze 
as he pronounced the word whiskers. — 

Shall we change the subject? By no 

means, replied the old lady; — I like your 
account of those matters: so throwing a 
thin gauze handkerchief over her head, and 
leaning it back upon the chair, with her 
face turned towards him, and advancing her 
two feet as she reclined herself, — I desire, 
continued she, you will go on. 

The old gentleman went on as follows : — 
Whiskers! cried the Queen of Navarre, 
dropping her knotting-ball as La Fosseuse 

uttered the word. Whiskers, Madam! 

said La Fosseuse, pinning the ball to the 
queen's apron, and making a courtesy as 
she repeated it. 

La Fosseuse's voice was naturally soft 
and low, yet 'twas an articulate voice ; and 
every letter of the word whiskers fell dis- 
tinctly upon the Queen of Navarre's ear. 
Whiskers! cried the queen, laying a 



greater stress upon the word, and as if she 

had still distrusted her ears. Whiskers ! 

replied La Fosseuse, repeating the word 
a third time.— There is not a cavalier, 
Madam, of his age in Navarre, continued 
the maid of honor, pressing the page's in- 
terest upon the queen, that has so gallant a 

pair Of what ? cried Margaret, smiling. 

Of whiskers, said La Fosseuse, with 

infinite modesty. 

The word whiskers still stood its ground, 
and continued to be made use of in most of 
the best companies throughout the little 
kingdom of Navarre, notwithstanding the 
indiscreet use which La Fosseuse had made 
of it : the truth was, La Fosseuse had pro- 
nounced the word not only before the queen, 
but upon sundry other occasions at court, 
with an accent which always implied some- 
thing of a mystery. — And as the court of 
Margaret, as all the wcrld knows, was at 
that time a mixture of gallantry and devo- 
tion, — and whiskers being ps applicable to 
the one as the other, the word naturally 
stood its ground ; — it gained full as much 
as it lost ; that is, the clergy were for it, — 
the laity were against it, — and, for the 
women, they were divided. 

The excellency of. the figure and mien 
•f the young Sieur De Croix, was at that 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 145 

time beginning to draw the attention of the 
maids of honor towards the terrace before 
the palace-gate, where the guard waa 
mounted. The lady De Baussiere fell deeply 
in love with him, — La Battarelle did the 
same ; it was the finest weather for it that 
ever was remembered in Navarre. — La 
Guyol, La Maronette, La Sabatiere, fell in 
love with the Sieur de Croix also ; La Re- 
bours and La Fosseuse knew better : — De 
Croix had failed in an attempt to recom- 
mend himself to La Rebours ; and La Re- 
bours and La Fosseuse were inseparable. 

The Queen of Navarre was sitting with 
her ladies in the painted bow-window, facing 
the gate of the second court, as De Croix 
passed through it. — He is handsome, said 

the Lady Baussiere. He has a good mien, 

said La Battarelle. He is finely shaped, 

said La Guyol, 1 never saw an officer 

of the horse-guards in my life, said La 

Maronette, with two such legs ; Or who 

stood so well upon them, said La Sabatiere. 
But he has no whiskers, cried La Fos- 
seuse. Not a pile, said La Rebours. 

The queen went directly to her oratory, 
musing all the way as she walked through 
the gallery, upon the subject; turning t 
this way and that way in her fancy. — Ave 

Maria H what can La Fosseuse mean? 

said she, kneeling down upon the cushion. 

La Guyol, La Battarelle, La Maronette, 
La Sabatiere, retired instantly to their 
chambers. Whiskers ! said all four of them 
to themselves, as they bolted the doors on 
the inside. 

The Lady Carnavallette was counting 
her beads with both hands, unsuspected 
under her farthingale. — From St. ^nthonv 
down to St. Ursula, inclusive, not a saint 
passed through her finger without whiskers : 
St. Francis, St. Dominick, St. Bennet, St. 
Basil, St. Bridget, had all whiskers. 

The Lady Baussiere had got into a wil • 
derness of conceits, with moralizing too 
intricately upon La Fosseuse's text : — she 
mounted her palfrey, her page followed iier, 
— the host passed by, — the Lady Baussjcie 
rode on. 

One denier, cried the Order of Mercy, — 
one single denier, in behalf of a thousand 
patient captives, whose eyes look Lowarni 
Heaven and vou for their reden-otion. 



-The Lady Baussiere nde on. 
13 



I 16 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



Pity thi inhappy, said a devout, venera 
bK hoary-headed man, meekly holding- up 
a box begirt with iron in his withered hands. 
— I beg for the unfortunate : — good my lady, 
'tis for a prison, — for an hospital, — 'tis for 
an old man, — a poor man undone by ship- 
wreck, by suretiship, by fire ; — I call God 
and all his angels to witness, — 'tis to clothe 
the naked, to feed the hungry; — 'tis to 
comfort the sick and the broken-hearted. 

The Lady Baussiere rode on. 

A decayed kinsman bowed himself to the 
ground. 

The Lady Baussiere rode on. 

He ran begging bare-headed on one side 
of her palfrey, conjuring her by the former 
bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, 
&c. — Cousin, aunt, sister, mother, — for vir- 
tue's sake, for your own, for mine, for 
Christ's sake, remember me ! — pity me ! 

The Lady Baussiere rode on. 

Take hold of my whiskers, said the Lady 

Baussiere. The page took hold of her 

.palfrey. She dismounted at the end of the 
terrace. 

There are some trains of certain ideas 
which leave prints of themselves about our 
eyes and eye-brows: and there is a con- 
sciousness of it, somewhere about the heart, 
which serves but to make these etchings 
.he stronger. — We see, spell, and put them 
.ogether, without a dictionary. 

Ha, ha ! he, hee ! cried La Guyol and 
La Sabatiere, looking close at each other's 
prints. — Ho, ho ! cried La Battarelle and 
Maronette, doing the same. — Whist ! cried 
one ; — st, st, said a second ; — hush, quoth a 
third ; — poo, poo, replied a fourth ; — gra- 
inercy! cried the Lady Carnavallette ; — 
'twas she who bewhisker'd St. Bridget. 

La Fosseuse drew her bodkin from the 
knot of her hair, and having traced the out- 
line of a small whisker, with the blunt end 
of it, upon one side of her upper lip, put it 
into La Rebours' hand. — La Rebours shook 
her head. 

The Lady Baussiere coughed thrice into 
♦he inside of her muff. — La Guyol smiled. 
— Fy ! said the Lady Baussiere. The 
'Queen of Navarre touched her eye with 
the tip of ner fore-finger, — as much as to 
«ay, I understand you all. 

'Twas plain to the whole court the word 
was ruined : La Fosseuse had given it a 



wound, and it was not the better for pass- 
ing through all these defiles. — It made a 
faint stand, however, for a few months ; by 
the expiration of which, the Sieur de Croix, 
finding it high time to leave Navarre for 
want of whiskers, — the word in course be- 
came indecent, and (after a few efforts) 
absolutely unfit for use. 

The best word in the best language of 
the best world, must have suffered under 

such combinations. The Curate d'Es- 

tella wrote a book against them, setting 
forth the dangers of accessory ideas, and 
warning the Navarrois against them. 

Does not all the world know, said the 
Curate d'Estella, at the conclusion of his 
work, that Noses ran the same fate, some 
centuries ago, in most parts of Europe, which 
whiskers have now done in the kingdom of 
Navarre ? — The evil, indeed, spread no far- 
ther then ; but have not beds and bolsters, 
and night-caps and chamber-pots, stood upon 
the brink of destruction ever since? Are 
not trouse, and placket-holes, and pump- 
handles, — and spigots, and faucets, in dan- 
ger still from the same association ? — Chas- 
tity, by nature the gentlest of all affections, 
— give it but its head, — 'tis like a ramping 
and a roaring lion. 

The drift of the Curate d'Estella's argu- 
ment was not understood. — They ran the 
scent the wrong way. — The world bridled 
his ass at the tail. — And when the extremes 
of Delicacy, and the beginnings of Concu- 
piscence, hold their next provincial chapter 
together, they may decree that bawdy also. 



CHAP. II. 



When my father received the letter which 
brought him the melancholy account of my 
brother Bobby's death, he was busy calcu- 
lating the expense of his riding post from 
Calais to Paris, and so on to Lyons. 

'Twas a most inauspicious journey ; my 
father having had every foot of it to travel 
over again, and his calculation to begin 
afresh when he had almost got to the end 
of it, by Obadiah's opening the door to ac- 
quaint him the family was oi l t of yeast, — 
and to ask whether he^ might not take tha 
great coach-horse early in the morning, and 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 147 

ride in search of some. With all my! from so lousy a town as Nevers. Whnt 

heart, Obadiah, said my father (pursuing! think'st thou, Toby? added my fattier in a 



his journey) ; — take the coach-horse, and 

welcome. But he wants a shoe, poor 

creature ! said Obadiah. Poor creature ! 

said my uncle Toby, vibrating- the note 

back again, like a string- in unison. 

Then ride the Scotch horse, quoth my 

rather hastily. He cannot bear a saddle 

upon his back, quoth Obadiah, for the whole 

world. The Devil's in that horse ; then 

take Patriot, cried my father, and shut the 

door. Patriot is sold, said Obadiah. 

Here's for you ! cried my father, making 
a pause, and looking in my uncle Toby's 
face as if the thing had not been a mat- 
ter of fact. Your Worship ordered me 

to sell him last April, said Obadiah. 

Then go on foot for your pains, cried my 

father. 1 had much rather walk than 

ride, said Obadiah, shutting the door. 

What plagues ! cried my father, going 

on with his calculation. But the waters 

are out, said Obadiah, — opening the door 
again. 

Till that moment, my father, who had 
a map of Sanson's, and a book of the post- 
roads hefore him, had kept his hand upon 
the head of his compasses, with one foot 
of them fixed upon Nevers, the last stage 
he had paid for, — purposing to go on from 
that point with his journey and calculation, 
as soon as Obadiah quitted the room: but 
this second attack of Obadiah's, in opening 
the door and laying the whole country un- 
der water, was too much. — He let go his 
compasses, — or rather, with a mixed mo- 
tion between accident and anger, he threw 
them upon the table: and then there was 
nothing for him to do, but to return back 
to Calais (like many others) as wise as he 
set out. 

When the letter was brought into the 
parlor, which contained the news of my 
brother's death, my father had got forwards 
again upon his journey to within a stride 
of the compasses of the very same stage 
of Nevers. By your leave, Mons. San- 
son, cried my father, striking the point of 
his compasses through Nevers into the table, 
—and nodding to my uracle Toby, to see 



sprightly tone. Unless it be a garrison 

town, said my uncle Toby, for then 1 

shall be a fool, said my father, smiling to 
himself, as long as I live. — So giving a 
second nod, and keeping his compasses 
still upon Nevers with one hand, and hold 
ing his book of the post-roads in the other, 
— half calculating and half listening, he 
leaned forwards upon the table witli both 
elbows, as my uncle Toby hummed over 
the letter. 



— he's 
Where ? 



gone ! said my uncle Toby. 

— Who 1 cried my father, My nephew, 

said my uncle Toby. What, without 

leave, — without money, — without gover- 
nor! cried my father in amazement. 

No: — he is dead, my dear brother, quoth 

my uncle Toby. Without being ill? 

cried my father again. 1 dare say not, 

said my uncle Toby, in a low voice, and 
fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his 
heart ; he has been ill enough, poor lad • 
I'll answer for him, — for he is dead. 

When Agrippina was told of her son's 
death, Tacitus informs us, that not being 
able to moderate the violence - of her pas- 
sions, she abruptly broke off her work. 

My father stuck his compasses into Nevers 
but so much the faster. — What contrarie- 
ties ! his, indeed, was matter of calculation ! 
Agrippina's must have been quite a differ- 
ent affair ; who else could pretend to reason 
from history? 

How my father went on, in my opinion, 
deserves a chapter to itself. 



CHAP. III. 



And a chapter it shall have, 

and a devil of a one too ; so look to your- 
selves. 

Tis either Plato, or Plutarch, or Seneca, 
or Xenophon, or Epictetus, or Theophras- 



whatwas in the letter, — twice in one night | tus, or Lucian, — or some one, perhaps, of 
js too much for an English gentleman and later date, — either Cardan, or Budreus, or 
his son, Mons. Sanson, to be turned back i Petrarch, or Stella, — or, possibly, it mav 



148 



LIFE AND OPINION 



be s<me divine or father of *he church; 
St. Austin, or St. Cyprian, or Barnard, who 
affirms, that it is an irresistible and natural 
passion to weep for the loss of our friends 
or children : — and Seneca (I'm positive) 
tells us somewhere, that such griefs evacu- 
ate themselves best by that particular chan- 
nel : and, accordingly, wo find, that David 
wept for his son Absalom, Adrian for his 
Antinous, Niobe for her children, and that 
Apollodorus and Crito both shed tears for 
Socrates before his death. 

My father managed his affliction other- 
wise ; and, indeed, differently from most 
men, either ancient or modern ; for he 
neither wept it away, as the Hebrews and 
the Romans, — nor slept it off, as the Lap- 
landers, — nor hanged it, as the English, — 
nor drowned it, as the Germans; nor did 
he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate 
't, or rhyme it, or lillebullero it. — 

— He got rid of it, however. 

Will your Worships give me leave to 
squeeze in a story between these two pages'? 

When Tully was bereft of his dear daugh- 
ter Tullia, at first he laid it to his heart, — 
he listened to the voice of nature, and modu- 
lated his own unto it. — O my Tullia ! my 
daughter! my child! — still, still, still, — 
'twas O my Tullia! — my Tullia ! Methinks 
I see my Tullia, I hear my Tullia, I talk 
with my Tullia. — But, as soon as he began 
to look into the stores of philosophy, and 
consider how many excellent things might 
be said upon the occasion, — nobody upon 
earth can conceive, says the great orator, 
how happy, how joyful it made me. 

My father was as proud of his eloquence 
as Marcus Tullius Cicero could be for his 
life, and, for aught I am convinced of to 
the contrary at present, with as much rea- 
son : it was, indeed, his strength and his 
weakness too. — His strength, for he was 
bv nature eloquent ; and his weakness, for 
he was hourly a dupe to it ; and, provided 
an occasion in life would but permit him 
*o shov his talents, or say either a wise 
thing, a witty, oi a shrewd one — (bating 
the case of a systematic misfortune) — he 
had all he wanted. — A blessing which tied 
up my father's tongue, and a misfortune 
which set it loose with a good grace, were 
orotty equa. . sometimes, indeed, the mis- 



fortune was the better of the two; for in- 
stance, where the pleasure of the harangue 
was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune 
but as five, — my father gained half in half; 
and, consequently, was as well again off, 
as if it had never befallen him. 

This clue will unravel what otherwise 
would seem very inconsistent in my father's 
domestic character; and it is this that, in 
the provocations arising from the neglects 
and blunders of servants, or other mishaps, 
unavoidable in a family, his anger, or rather 
the duration of it, eternally ran counter to 
all conjecture. 

My father had a favorite little mare, 
which he had consigned over to a most 
beautiful Arabian horse, in order to have a 
pad out of her for his own riding. He was 
sanguine in all his projects ; so talked about 
his pad every day with as absolute a security, 
as if he had been reared, broke, — and bri- 
dled and saddled at his door ready foi 
mounting. By some neglect or other in 
Obadiah, it so fell out, that my fathers ex- 
pectations were answered with nothing bet- 
ter than a mule, and as ugly a beast of the 
kind as ever was produced. 

My mother and my uncle Toby expected 
my father would be the death of Obadiah, 
— and that there would never be an end of 

the disaster. See here ! you rascal, cried 

my father, pointing to the mule, what yott 

have done ! It was not me, said Obadiah, 

How do I know that? replied my 

father. 

Triumph swam in my father's eyes at 
the repartee, — the Attic salt brought water 
into them ; — and so Obadiah heard no more 
about it. 

Now let us go back to my brother's death. 

Philosophy has a fine saying for every 
thing. — For Death, it has an entire set : the 
misery was, they all at once rushed so into 
my father's head, that 'twas difficult to string 
them together, so as to make any thing of a 
consistent show out of them. — He took them 
as they came. — 

"'Tis an inevitable chance, — the first 
" statute in Magna Charta ; — it is an ever- 
" lasting act of parliament, my dear bro- 
" ther, — All must die. 

" If my son could not have died, it had been 
" matter of wonder ; — not that he is dead 



*' Monarchs and princes dance in the same 
•'ring- with us. 

" To die, is the great debt and tribute 
"due unto nature: tombs and monuments, 
f which should perpetuate our memories, 
44 pay it themselves; and the proudest pyr- 
"amid of them all, which Wealth and Sci- 
44 ence have erected, has lost its apex, and 
44 stands obtruncated in the traveller's hori- 
zon." (My father found he got great 

ease, and went on) — " Kingdoms and prov- 
44 inces, and towns and cities, have they not 
44 their periods] and when those principles 
44 and powers, which at first cemented and 
44 put them together, have performed their 

"several evolutions, they fall back." 

Brother Shandy, said my uncle Toby, laying 

down his pipe at the word evolutions, 

Revolutions, I meant, quoth my father; — 
by Heaven ! I meant revolutions, brother 

Toby; — evolutions is nonsense. 'Tis not 

nonsense, said my uncle Toby. But is it 

not nonsense to break the thread of such a 
discourse upon such an occasion ] cried my 
father ; — do not, dear Toby, continued he, 
taking him by the hand, do not — do not, I 
beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis. 

My uncle Toby put his pipe into his 

mouth. 

" Where is Troy and Mycenae, and Thebes 
"and Delos, and Persepolis and Agrigen- 
" turn 1" continued my father, taking up his 
book of post-roads, which he had laid down. — 
" What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh 
41 and Babylon, of Cyzicum and Mitylenae ] 
" The fairest towns that ever the sun rose 
44 upon, are now no more ; the names only 
44 are left ; and those (for many of them are 
44 wrong spelt) are falling themselves by 
44 piecemeal to decay, and in length of time 
44 will be forgotten, and involved with every 
44 thing in a perpetual night. The world 
44 itself, brother Toby, must, — must come 
44 to an end. 

"Returning out of Asia, when I sailed 
"from iEgina towards Megara," (when can 
this have been! thought my uncle Toby) 
44 1 began to view the country round about. 
•* — iEgina was behind me, Megara was be- 
4 fore, Pyreeus on the right hand, Corinth 
4 on the left. — What flourishing towns now 
•* prostrate upon the earth ' Alas ! alas ! 
" said I to myself, that man should disturb 
* his soul for the loss of a child, when so 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 149 

44 much as this lies awfully buried in his 
44 presence ! — Remember, said I to myself 
44 again, — remember thou art a man." 

Now, my uncle Toby knew not that this 
last paragraph was an extract of Servius 
Sulpicius's consolatory letter to Tully :— 
he had as little skill, honest man, in the 
fragments, as he had in the whole pieces 
of antiquity : — and as my father, whilst he 
was concerned in the Turkey trade, had 
been three or four different times in the Le- 
vant, in one of which he had staid a whole 
year and an half at Zante, my uncle Toby 
naturally concluded, that, in some one of 
these periods, he had taken a trip across the 
Archipelago into Asia ; and that all this sail- 
ing affair, with Mg'ma, behind, and Megara 
before, and Pyraeus on the right hand, &c. 
&c. was nothing more than the true course 
of my father's voyage and reflections. — 
'Twas certainly in his manner ; and many 
an undertaking critic would have built two 

stories higher upon worse foundations. 

And pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, 
laying the end of his pipe upon my father's 
hand in a kindly way of interruption, — but 
waiting till he finished the account, — What 

year of our Lord was this] 'Twas no 

year of our Lord, replied my father. 

That's impossible, cried my uncle Toby. 

Simpleton ! said my father, — 'twas- 

forty years before Christ was born. 

My uncle Toby had but two things foi 
it; either to suppose his brother to be the 
Wandering Jew, or that his misfortunes 

had disordered his brain. 44 May the Lord 

44 God of heaven and earth protect him and 
44 restore him !" said my uncle Toby, pray- 
ing silently for my father, and with tears 
in his eyes. 

My father placed the tears to a proper 
account, and went on with his harangue 
with great spirit. — 

44 There is not such great odds, brother 
44 Toby, betwixt good and evil, as the world 
44 imagines." — (This way of setting off, by 
the bye, was not likely to cure my uncle 

Toby's suspicions.) " Labor, sorrow, 

44 grief, sickness, want, and woe, are the 

44 sauces of life." Much good may it Co 

them, — said my uncle Toby to himself 

44 My son is dead ! — so much the better . 

44 — 'tis a shame, in such a rempest, to have 

44 but one anchor. 

13* 



150 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



" But he is ryone for ever from us ! — be 

it so. — He is got from under the hands of 
" his barber before he was bald ; — he is but 
" risen from a feast before he was surfeit- 
" ed ; — from a banquet before he had got 
" drunken. 

" The Thracians wept when a child was 
4 born," — (and we were very near it, quoth 
my uncle Toby) — "and feasted and made 
" merry when a man went out of the world ; 
" and with reason. — Death opens the gate 
" of Fame, and shuts the gate of Envy after 
" it : — it unlooses the chain of the captive, 
" — and puts the bondsman's task into an- 
" other man's hands. 

"Show me the man, who knows what 
"life is, who dreads it, — and I'll show thee 
"a prisoner who dreads his liberty." 

Is it not better, my dear brother Toby (for 
mark, — our appetites are but diseases) — is 
it not better not to hunger at all, than to 
eat? — not to thirst, than to take physic to 
cure it? 

Is it not better to be freed from cares 
and agues, — from love and melancholy, — 
and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, 
like a galled traveller, who comes weary to 
his inn, to be bound to begin his journey 
afresh ) 

There is no terror, brother Toby, in its 
looks, but what it borrows from groans and 
convulsions, and the blowing of noses and 
the wiping away of tears with the bottoms 
of curtains, in a dying man's room. — Strip 

it of these, — What is it? 'Tis better in 

battle than in bed, said my uncle Toby. — 
Take away its hearses, its mutes, and its 
mourning, — its plumes, escutcheons, and 

other mechanic aids, — What is it? 

Better in battle ! continued my father, smi- 
ling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother 
Bobby ; — 'tis terrible no way, — for consider, 
brother Toby, — when we are, death is not ; 

— and when death is, — we are not. My 

uncle Toby laid down his pipe, to consider 
the proposition ; my father's eloquence was 
too rapid to stay tor any man; — away it 
went, — and hurried my uncle Toby's ideas 
along with it. 

For this reason, continued my father, 'tis 
worthy to recollect, how little alteration, in 
great men, the approacnes of death have 
made. — Vespasian died in a jest upon his 
close-stool ; — Galba with a sentence ; — Sep- 



timus Severus in a dispatch, — Tiberius m 
dissimulation ; — and Caesar Augustus in a 

compliment. 1 hope 'twas a sincere one, 

— quoth my uncle Toby. 

'Twas to his wife, — said my father. 



CHAP. IV. 



And lastly, — for of all the choice 

anecdotes which history can produce of this* 
matter, continued my father, — this, like 
the gilded dome which covers in the fabric, 
— crowns all. 

'Tis of Cornelius Gallus, the prsetor, — 
which, I dare say, brother Toby, you have 

read. 1 dare say I have not, replied my 

uncle. He died, said my father, as * * 

************* * And if it 

was with hio wife, said my uncle Toby, — 

there could be no hurt in it. That'9 

more than I know, — replied my father. 



CHAP. V. 



My mother was going very giirg-erly 111 
the dark along the passage which led to the 
parlor, as my uncle Toby pronounced the 
word wife. — 'Tis a shrill penetrating sound 
of itself, and Obadiah had helped it by leav- 
ing the door a little ajar, so that my mother 
heard encugh of it to imagine herself the 
subject of the conversation ; so laying the 
edge of her finger across her two lips, — 
holding in her breath, and bending her head 
a little downwards, with a twist of her neck 
— (not towards the door, but from it, by 
which means her ear was brought to the 
chink) — she listened with all her powers: 
— the listening slave, with the Goddess of 
Silence at his back, could not have given 
a finer thought for an intaglio. 

In this attitude I am determined to let 
her stand for five minutes, — till I bring up 
the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does 
those of the church) to the same period. 



CHAP. VI. 
Though, in one sense, our family ww 
certainly a simple machine, as it consisted 



of a few wheels; yet there was thus much 
to be said for it, that these wheels were set 
in motion by so many different springs, and 
acted one upon the other from such a va- 
riety of strange principles and impulses, 
— that though it was a simple machine, it 
had all the honor and advantages of a com- 
plex one, — and a number of as odd move- 
ments within it, as ever were beheld in the 
inside of a Dutch silk-mill. 

Amongst these there was one, I am going 
to speak of, in which, perhaps, it was not 
altogether so singular as in many others: 
and it was this, that whatever motion, de- 
bate, harangue, dialogue, project, or disser- 
tation, was going forward in the parlor, 
there was generally another at the same 
time, and upon the same subject, running 
parallel along with it in the kitchen. 

Now to bring this about, whenever an 
extraordinary message, or letter, was de- 
livered in the parlor, — or a discourse sus 
pended till a servant went out, — or the 
lines of discontent were observed to hang 
upon the brows of my father or mother ; 
or, in short, when any thing was supposed 
to be upon the tapis worth knowing or lis- 
tening to, 'twas the rule to leave the door, 
not absolutely shut, but somewhat ajar, — as 
it stands just now ; — which, under covert 
of the bad hinge (and that possibly might 
be one of the many reasons why it was 
never mended) it was not difficult to man- 
age; by which means, in all these cases, 
a passage was generally left, not indeed so 
wide as the Dardanelles, but wide enough, 
for all that, to carry on as much of this 
windward trade as was sufficient to save 
my father the trouble of governing his 
house ; — my mother at this moment stands 
profiting by it. — Obadiah did the same 
thing, as soon as he had left the letter upon 
the table which brought the news of my 
brother's death ; so that before my father 
had well got over his surprise, and entered 
upon his harangue, — had Trim got upon his 
legs, to speak his sentiments upon the sub- 
ject. 

A curious observer of nature, had he 
been worth the inventory of all Job's stock, 
— though, by the bye, yovr curious observ- 
ers are seldom worth a groat, — would have 
given the half of it to have heard Corporal 
Trim and mv father, two orators so con- 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. . 51 

trasted by nature and education, haranguing 
over the same bier. 

My father, — a man of deep reading, — 
prompt memory, — with Cato, and Seneca, 
and Epictetus, at his fingers' ends : — 

The Corporal, — with nothing — to re- 
member; — of no deeper reading than his 
muster-roll, — or greater names at his fin- 
gers' ends, than the contents of it. 

The one proceeding from period to pe- 
riod, by metaphor and allusion, and striking 
the fancy as he went along (as men of wit 
and fancy do) with the entertainment and 
pleasantry of his pictures and images. 

The other, without wit or antithesis, or 
point, or turn, this way or that ; but leaving 
the images on one side, and the pictures on 
the other, going straight-forwards, as nature 
could lead him, to the heart. — O Trim ! 
would to Heaven thou hadst a better histo- 
rian ! — Would thy historian had a better 
pair of breeches! — O ye critics! will no- 
thing melt you 1 



chap. vn. 

My young master in London is dead 
said Obadiah. 

A green satin night-gown of my 

mother's, which had been twice scoured, 
was the first idea which Obadiah's excla- 
mation brought into Susannah's head. 

Well might Locke write a chapter upon 

the imperfections of words. Then, quoth 

Susannah, we must all go into mourning. 

But note a second time : the word 

mourning, notwithstanding Susannah made 
use of it herself, — failed also of doing its 
office ; it excited not one single idea, tinged 
either with grey or black : — all was green. 
— The green satin night-gown hung there 
still. 

— O ! 'twill be the death of my poor mis- 
tress, cried Susannah. — My mother's whole 
wardrobe followed. — What a possession ! 
her red damask, — her orange-tawny, — ner 
white and yellow lutestrings, — her brown 
taffeta, — her bone-laced caps, her bed- 
gowns, and comfortable under-petticoats.-- 
Not a rag was left behind. — "No; — she 
" will never look up again .'" said Susannah. 

We had a fat, foolish scuJiou . — my 



152 LIFE AND 

r ather, I think, kept her for her simplicity ; 
— she had been all autumn struggling with 

a dropsy. He is dead, said Obadiah ; — 

he is certainly dead ! So am not I, said 

the foolish scullion. 

Here is sad news, Trim, cried Su- 
sannah, wiping her eyes as Trim stepp'd 
into the kitchen ; — Master Bobby is dead 
and buried! — the funeral was an interpola- 
tion of Susannah's ; we shall have all to go 
into mourning, said Susannah. 

I hope not, said Trim. You hope not ! 

cried Susannah earnestly. — The mourning 
ran not in Trim's head, whatever it did in 
Susannah's. — I hope, — said Trim, explain- 
ing himself, I hope in God the news is not 

true. 1 heard the letter read with my 

own ears, answered Obadiah ; and we shall 
have a terrible piece of work of it in stub- 
bing the Ox-moor. Oh ! he's dead, said 

Susannah, As sure, said the scullion, as 

I'm alive. 

I lament for him from my heart and my 
soul, said Trim, fetching a sigh. — Poor crea- 
ture ! — poor boy ! — poor gentleman ! 

He was alive last Whitsuntide ! said 

the coachman. Whitsuntide ! alas ! cried 

Trim, extending his right arm, and falling 
instantly into the same attitude in which 
he read the sermon, — what is Whitsuntide, 
Jonathan, (for that was the coachman's 
name) or Shrovetide, or any tide or time 
past to this! Are we not here. now, contin- 
ued the Corporal (striking the end of his 
stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as 
to give an idea of health and stability;) — 
and are we not — (dropping his hat upon the 
ground) gone! in a moment! — 'Twas infi- 
nitely striking! Susannah burst into a flood 

of tears. — We are notstocksand stones. 

Jonathan, Obadiah, the cook-maid, all melt- 
ed. — The foolish fat scullion herself, who 
was scouring a fish-kettle upon her knees, 
was rous'd with it. — The whole kitchen 
crowded about the Corporal. 

Now. as I perceive plainly, that the 
preservation of our constitution in church 
and state, — and possibly the preservation 
of the whole world, — or, what is the same 
thing, the distribution and balance of its 
property and power, may, in time to come, 
iepend greatly upon the right understand- 
ing of this stroke of the Corporal's elo- 
quence, — I do demand your attention : — 



OPINIONS 

your Worships and Reverences, for any ten 
pages together, take them where you will 
in any other part of the work, shall sleep 
for it at your ease. 

I said, " We are not stocks and stones :" 
— 'tis very well. I should have added, nor 
are we angels, — I wish we were; — but 
men clothed with bodies, and governed by 
our imaginations : — and what a junketing 
piece of work of it there is betwixt these 
and our seven senses, especially some ot 
them; for my own part, I own it, I am 
ashamed to confess. Let it suffice to affirm 
that of all the senses, the eye (for I abso- 
lutely deny the touch, though most of youi 
Barbati, I know, are for it) has the quickest 
commerce with the soul, — gives a smartei 
stroke, and leaves something more inex- 
pressible upon the fancy than words can 
either convey, — or sometimes get rid of. 

I've gone a little about; — no matter, 'tis 
for health, — let us only carry it back in our 
mind, to the mortality of Trim's hat. — 
"Are we not here now, — and gone in a 
"moment]" — There was nothing in the 
sentence ; — 'twas one of your self-evident 
truths we have the advantage of hearing 
every day; and if Trim had not trusted 
more to his hat than his head, — he had 
made nothing at all of it. 

"Are we not here nowl" continued 

the Corporal ; " and are we not " (drop- 
ping his hat plump upon the ground, — and 
pausing, before he pronounced the word) — 
" gone in a moment ]" The descent of the 
hat was as if a heavy lump of clay had been 
kneaded into the crown of it. — Nothing 
could have expressed the sentiment of mor- 
tality, of which it was the type and fore- 
runner, like it ; — his hand seemed to vanish 
from under it ; — it fell dead ; — the Corpo- 
ral's eye fixed upon it as upon a corpse ; — 
and Susannah burst into a flood of tears. 

Now, — ten thousand, and ten thousand 
times ten thousand (for matter and motion 
are infinite) are the ways by which a hat 
may be dropped upon the ground without 
any effect. — Had he flung it, or thrown it, 
or cast it, or skimmed it, or souirted it, or 
let it slip or fall in any possible direction 
under Heaven, — or in the Lest direction 
that could be given to it • — had he droppev 
it like a goose — like a puppy, — like an as«; 
in doing it, or even aftei he had don© 



it, had he looked like a fool,— like a ninny, 
— like a nincompoop, — it had fail'd, and 
the effect upon the heart had been lost. 

Ye who govern this mighty world and 
its mighty concerns with the engines of 
eloquence ; — who heat it, and cool it, and 
melt it, and mollify it, — and then harden 
it again to your purpose: 

Ye who wind and turn the passions with 
this great windlass; and, having done it, 
lead the owners of them whither ye think 
meet : 

Ye, lastly, who drive ; and why not! 

Ye also who are driven like turkeys to 
market, with a stick and a red clout, — 
meditate, — meditate, I beseech you, upon 
Trim's hat. 



CHAP. VIII. 



Stay, — I have a small account to settle 
with the reader before Trim can go on with 
his harangue. — It shall be done in two 
minutes. 

Amongst many other book-debts, all of 
which I shall discharge in due time, — I 
own myself a debtor to the world for two 
items, a chapter upon chamber-maids and 
button-holes : which, in the former part of 
my work, I promised and fully intended 
to pay off this year : but some of your 
Worships and Reverences telling me that 
the two subjects, especially so connected 
together, might endanger the morals of the 
world, — I pray the chapter upon chamber- 
maids and button-holes may be forgiven 
me, — and that they will accept of the last 
chapter in lieu of it; which is nothing, 
an't please your Reverences, but a chap- 
ter of chamber-maids, green gowns, and 
old hats. 

Trim took his hat off the ground, — put 
•t upon his head, — and then went on with 
his oration upon death, in manner and form 
fcllow in£f : — 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 153 

vice of two of the best of musters — (bating, 
in my own case, his majesty King William 
the Third, whom I had the honor to serve 
both in Ireland and Flanders) — I own it, 
that from Whitsuntide to withm three weeks 
of Christmas, — 'tis not long, — 'tis like no- 
thing; — but to those, Jonathan, who know 
what death is, and what havoc and destruc- 
tion he can make, before a man can well whee. 
about, — 'tis like a whole age, — O Jonathan ! 
— 'twould make a good-natured man's heart 
bleed, to consider, continued the Corporal, 
(standing perpendicularly) how low many 
a brave and upright fellow has been laid 
since that time ! — And trust me, Susy, add- 
ed the Corporal, turning to Susannah, whose 
eyes were swimming in water, — before 
that time comes round again, — many a 

bright eye will be dim. Susannah 

placed it to the right side of the page; — 
she wept, — but she court'sied too. — Are 
we not, continued Trim, looking still at 
Susannah, — are we not like a flower of 
the field 1 A tear of pride stole in be- 
twixt every two tears of humiliation — else 
no tongue could have described Susannah's 
affliction. — Is not. all flesh grass 1 — 'Tis clay, 

— 'tis — dirt. They all looked directly 

at the scullion ; — the scullion had just been 
scouring a fish-kettle. — It was not fair. — 

— What is the finest face that ever man 

looked at ! 1 could hear Trim talk so for 

ever, cried Susannah, — what is it ! — (Su- 
sannah laid her hand upon Trim's shoulder) 
— but corruption ! Susannah took it off. 

Now I love you for this ; — and 'tis this 
delicious mixture within you which makes 
you dear creatures what you are ; — and he 

who hates you for it all I can say of 

the matter is, — That he has either a pump- 
kin for his head, — or a pippin for his heart ; 
— and whenever he is dissected 'twill oe 
found so. 



CHAP. IX. 



CHAP. X. 



Whether Susannah by taking her hand 
too suddenly from oft' the Corporal's shoul- 
der, (by the whisking about of her passions) 
— broke a little the chain of his reflec- 



To us, Jonathan, who know not what tions, — 

ant or care is, — who live here in the ser-[ Or whether the Corporal began tc r»e 
U 



154 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



suspicious he had got into the Doctor's 
quarters, and was talking more like the 
Chaplain than himself, 

Or .whether, --------- 

Or "hethcr, — for in all such cases a 
man of invention and parts may, with 
pleasure, fill a couple of pages with suppo- 
sitions, — which of all these was the cause, 
let the curious physiologist, or the curious 
any body, determine, — 'tis certain, at least, 
the Corporal went on thus with his ha- 
rangue. — 

For my own part, I declare it, that out 
of doors, I value not death at all : — not 
this . . added the Corporal, snapping 
his ringers; — but with an air which no 
one but the Corporal could have given to 
the sentiment. — In battle I value death 
not this . . . and let him not take me 
cowardly, like poor Joe Gibbons, in scour- 
ing his gun. — What is he 1 — A pull of a 
trigger ; — a push of a bayonet an inch this 
way or that, — makes the difference. Look 
along the line — to the right, — see ! Jack's 
down! Well, — 'tis worth a regiment of 
horse to him. — No; — 'tis Dick. — Then 
Jack's no worse. — Never mind which ; — 
we pass on, — in hot pursuit; the wound 
itself which brings him is not felt, — the 
best way is to stand up to him ; — the man 
who flies, is in ten times more danger than 
the man who marches up into his jaws. 
— I've looked him, added the Corporal, an 
hundred times in the face, — and know what 
he is. He's nothing, Obadiah, at all in the 

field. But he's very frightful in a house, 

quoth Obadiah. 1 never mind it myself, 

said Jonathan, upon a coach-box. It 

must, in my opinion, be most natural in 

bed, replied Susannah, And could I 

escape him by creeping into the worst 
calf's skin that ever was made into a knap- 
sack, I would do it there, — said Trim ; — 
but that is nature. 

Nature is nature, said Jonathan. 

And that is the reason, cried Susan- 
nah, I so much pity my mistress. — She 

will never get the better of it. Now I 

pity the Captain the most of any one in 
the family, answered Trim. — Madam will 
£et. ease of h^art in weeping, — and the 
Squire in talking about it, — but my poor 



master will keep it all in silence to him- 
self. — I shall hear him sigh in his bed for 
a whole month together, as he did for 
Lieutenant Le Fevre. An' please your 
Honor, do not sigh so piteously, I would 
say to him as I lay beside him. — I cannot 
help it, Trim, my master would say ; — tis 
so melancholy an accident, — I cannot get 

it off my heart. Your Honor fears not 

death yourself. 1 hope, Trim, I fear 

nothing, he would say, but the doing a 
wrong thing. — Well, he would add, what- 
ever betides, I will take care of Le Fevre's 
boy. — And with that, like a quieting draught, 
his Honor w T ould fall asleep. 

I like to hear Trim's stories about the 
Captain, said Susannah. He is a kindly- 
hearted gentleman, said Obadiah, as ever 

lived. Ay, and as brave a one too, said the 

Corporal, as ever stept before a platoon. — 
There never was a better officer in the 
King's army, — or a better man in God's 
world ; for he would march up to the mouth 
of a cannon, though he saw the lighted match 
at the very touch-hole : and yet, for all that, 
he has a heart as soft as a child for other 

people : — he would not hurt a chicken. 1 

would sooner, quoth Jonathan, drive such a 
gentleman for seven pounds a year, — than 

some for eight. Thank thee, Jonathan ! 

for thy twenty shillings, — as much, Jona- 
than, said the Corporal, shaking him by the 
hand, as if thou hadst put the money into 
my own pocket. — I would serve him to the 
day of my death out of love. He is a friend 
and a brother to me ; — and could I be sure 
my poor brother Tom was dead, — continued 
the Corporal, taking out his handkerchief, 
— was I worth ten thousand pounds, I would 
leave every shilling of it to the Captain. — 
Trim could not refrain from tears at this 
testamentary proof he gave of his affection 
to his master. The whole kitchen was 

affected. Do tell us the story of the 

poor Lieutenant, said Susannah. — With all 
my heart, answered the Corporal. 

Susannah, the cook, Jonathan, Obadiah> 
and Corporal Trim, formed a circle about 
the fire; and as soon as the scullion had 
shut the kitchen-door, — the Corporal be- 
gan, 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



155 



CHAP. XL 

I am a Turk if I had not as much forgot 
my mother, as if Nature had plastered me 
up, and set me down naked upon the banks 
of the river Nile, without one. — Your most 
obedient servant, Madarn, — I've cost you a 
great deal of trouble. — I wish it may an- 
swer; — but you have left a crack in my 
kick ; — and here's a great piece fallen off 
here before : — and what must I do with 
this foot? — I shall never reach England 
with it. 

For my own part, I never wonder at any 
thing ; — and so often has my judgment de- 
ceived me in my life, that I always suspect 
it, right or wrong; — at least, I am seldom 
hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I rev- 
erence truth as much as any body ; and 
when it has slipped us, if a man will but 
take me by the hand, and go quietly and 
search for it, as for a thing we have both 
lost, and can neither of us do well without, 
— I'll go to the world's end with him. — 
But I hate disputes, — and therefore (bating 
religious points, or such as touch society) I 
would almost subscribe to any thing which 
does not choke me in the first passage, 
rather than be drawn into one. — But I can- 
not bear suffocation ; — and bad smells worst 
of all. — For which reasons, I resolved from 
the beginning, that if ever the army of 
martyrs was to be augmented, — or a new 
one raised, — I would have no hand in it, one 
way or t'other. 



CHAP. XII. 



— But to return to my mother. 

My uncle Toby's opinion, Madam, " That 
" there could be no harm in Cornelius Gal- 
" lus, the Roman praetor's lying with his 
" wife ;" — or rather the last word of that 
opinion, — (for it was all my mother heard 
of it) caught hold of her by the weak 
part of the whole sex ; —you shall not mis- 
take me, — I mean her curiosity ; — she in- 
stant '«• concluded herself the subject of 
the conversation, and with that prepos- 
session upon her fancy, you will readily 
conceive, every word my father said was 
accommodated nitlu*' to herself or her 
family-concerns. 



— Pray, Madam, in what street does the 
lady live who would net have done the 
same ! 

From the strange mode of Cornel iuo 
death, my father had made a transition tr> 
that of Socrates, and was giving my uncle 
Toby an abstract of his pleading before his 

judges ; — 'twas irresistible : not the 

oration of Socrates, — but my father's temp- 
tation to it. — He had wrote the * Life of 
Socrates himself the year before he left off 
trade; which, I fear, was the means of 
hastening him out of it ; — so that no one 
was able to set out with so full a sail, and 
in so swelling a tide of heroic loftiness upon 
the occasion, as my father was. Not a 
period in Socrates's oration which closed 
with a shorter word than transmigration, or 
annihilation, — or a worse thought in the 
middle of it than to be — or not to be, — the 
entering upon a new and untried state of 
things, — or upon a long, a profound and 
peaceful sleep, without dreams, without 
disturbance! — That we and our children 
were born to die, — but neither of us born 
to be slaves. — No, there I mistake; that 
was part of Eleazer's oration, as recorded 
by Josephus (de Bell. Judaic.) -Eleazei 
owns he had it from the philosophers of In- 
dia. In all likelihood, Alexander the Great, 
in his irruption into India, after he had 
overrun Persia, amongst the many things 
he stole, — stole that sentiment also; by 
which means it was carried, if not all the 
way by himself (for we all know he died at 
Babylon) at least by some of his marauders, 
into Greece, — from Greece it got to Rome, 
from Rome to France, — and from France 
to England. — So things come round : — 

By land-carriage ; I can conceive no 
other way. — 

By water, the sentiment might easily 
have come down the Ganges, into the Si- 
nus Gangeticus, or Bay of Bengal, and so 
into the Indian Sea; and following the 
course of trade (the way from India by the 
Cape of Good Hope being then unknown) 
might be carried, with other drugs and 
spices, up the Red Sea to Joddah, the port 
of Mecca, or else to Tor or Suez, town./ at 



* This book my father would never consent to puo 
lish; 'tis in manuscript, with some other tracts of hin, 
in the family; all, or most of which, will be 'rill led 
in due time. 



156 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



the bottom of the Gulf; and from thence 
by caravans to Coptos, but three days' jour- 
ney distant, so down the Nile directly to 
Alexandria, where the sentiment would be 
landed at the very foot of the great stair- 
case of the Alexandrian library ; — and from 
that storehouse it would be fetched. — Bless 
me ! what a trade was driven by the learned 
in those days ! 



CHAP. XIII. 

— Now my father had a way, a little like 
that of Job's (in case there ever was such 
a man) — if not, there's an end of the mat- 
ter.— 

Though, by the bye, because your learned 
men find some difficulty in fixing the pre- 
cise era in which so great a man lived ; — 
whether, for instance, before or after the 
patriarchs, &c. — to vote, therefore, that he 
never lived at all, is a little cruel ; — 'tis not 
doing as they would be done by. — Happen 
that as it may, — my father, I say, had a 
way, when things went extremely wrong 
with him, especially upon the first sally of 
his impatience — of wondering why he was 
begot ; — wishing himself dead ; — sometimes 
worse: — and when the provocation ran 
high, and grief touched his lips with more 
than ordinary powers,— Sir, you scarce could 
have distinguished him from Socrates him- 
self. — Every word would breathe sentiments 
of a soul disdaining life, and careless about 
all its issues ; for which reason, though my 
mother was a woman of no deep reading, 
yet the abstract of Socrates's oration, which 
my father was giving my uncle Toby, was 
not altogether new to her. — She listened 
to it with composed intelligence, and would 
have done so to the end of the chapter, 
had not my father plunged (which he had 
no occasion to have done) into that part of 
Ihe uleading where the great philosopher 
reckons up his connexions, his alliances, 
and cuildren; but renounces a security to 
be so won, by working upon the passions 
of his judges. — "I have friends, — I have 
" relations, — I have three desolate chil- 
dren." — says Socrates. — 

Then, cried my mother, opening the 

door. — you have one more, Mr. Shandy, 
than I know of. 



By Heaven ! I have one less, -said 

my father, getting up and walking out ci 
the room. 



CHAP. XIV 

They are Socrates's children, saudl 

my uncle Toby. He has been dead a 

hundred years ago, replied my mother. 

My uncle Toby was no chronologer ; — 
so not caring to advance one step but upon 
safe ground, he laid down his pipe delibe 
rately upon the table, and rising up, and 
taking my mother most kindly by the hand, 
without saying another word, either good 
or bad, to her, he led her out after my 
father, that he might finish the eclaircisse 
ment himself. 



CHAP. XV. 

Had this volume been a farce, which, 
unless every one's Life and Opinions are to 
be looked upon as a farce as well as mine, 
I see no reason to suppose, — the last chap- 
ter, Sir, had finished the first act of it; and 
then this chapter must have set off thus: — 

Ptr..r..r..ing, — twing, — twang, — prut, 
— trut ; — 'tis a cursed bad fiddle. — Do you 
know whether my fiddle's in tune or no] — 
trut..prut..— They should be fifths.— 'Tis 
wickedly strung, — tr...a.e.i.o.u.-twang. — 
The bridge is a mile too high, and the 
sound-post absolutely down, — else, — trut. . 
prut. — Hark ! 'tis not so bad a tone.- — Did- 
dle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle, dum. 
There is nothing in playing before good 
judges ; — but there's a man there, — no, — 
not him with the bundle under his arm, — 
the grave man in black. — 'Sdeath ! not the 
gentleman with the sword on. — Sir, I had 
rather play a Caprichio to Calliope herself, 
than draw my bow across my fiddle before 
that very man ; and yet I'll stake my Cre- 
mona to a Jew's trump, which is the great- 
est musical odds that ever were laid, that I 
will this moment stop three hundred and 
fifty leagues out of tune upon my fiddle, 
without punishing one single nerve that 
belongs to him. — Twaddle diddle, — twcddlo 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



15 



diddle.- twiddle diddle,— twoddle diddle,— 
twuddle diddle;— prut-trut,— krisn,— krash, 
— krush. — I've undone you, Sir, — but you 
see he's no worse; — and was Apollo to 
take his fiddlo after me, he can make him 
oo better. 

Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle, 
— hum, — dum, — drum. 

Your Worships and your Reverences love 
music, — and God has made you all with good 
ears, — and some of you play delightfully 
yourselves; — trut-prut, — prut-trut. 

O ! there is — whom I could sit and hear 
whol" days, — whose talents lie in .making 
what he fiddles to be felt ; — who inspires 
me with his joys and hopes, and puts the 
most hidden springs of my heart into mo- 
tion. — If you would borrow five guineas 
of me, Sir, — which is generally ten guineas 
more than I have to spare, — or ycu, Messrs. 
Apothecary and Taylor, want your bills 
paid, — that's your time. 



CHAP. XVI. 

The first thing which entered my father's 
head, after affairs were a little settled in 
the family, and Susannah had got possession 
of my mother's green satin night-gown. — 
was to sit down coolly, after the example 
of Xenophon, and write a Tristrapcedia, dr 
system of education for me; collecting first 
for that purpose his own scattered thoughts, 
counsels, and notions; and binding them 
together, so as to form an institute for the 
government of my childhood and adoles- 
cence. — I was my father's last stake, — he 
nad lost my brother Bobby entirely, — he 
nad lost, by his own computation, full three- 
fourths of me, — that is, he had been unfor- 
tunate in his three first great casts for me : 
— my geniture, nose, and name ! — there was 
but this one left ; and accordingly my father 
gave himself up to it with as much devo- 
tion as ever my uncle Toby had done to his 
doctrine of projectiles. — The difference be- 
tween them was, that my uncle Toby drew 
his whole knowledge of projectiles from 
Nicholas Tartaglia. — My father spun his, 
every thread of it, out of his own brain, — 
or had so reeled and cross-twisted what all 
»ther spinners and spinsters had spun before 



him, that 'twas pretty near the same torture 
to him. 

In about three years, or something more, 
my father had got advanced almost into the 
middle of his work. — Like all other writers, 
he met with disappointments. — He imagined 
he should be able to bring whatever he had 
to say, into so small a compass, that when 
it was finished and bound, it might be rolled 
up in my mother's housewife. — Matter 
grows under our hands. — Let no man say, 
— " Come, — I'll write a duodecimo.'' 1 

My father gave himself up to it, how- 
ever, with the most painful diligence, pro- 
ceeding step by step in every line, with the 
same kind of caution and circumspection 
(though I cannot say upon quite so religious 
a principle) as was used by John de la Casse, 
the Lord Archbishop of Benevento, in com- 
posing his Galatea ; in which his Grace of 
Benevento spent near forty years of his 
life ; and, when the thing came out, it was 
not of above half the size or thickness of a 
Rider's Almanac. — How the holy man 
managed the affair, unless he spent the 
greatest part of his time in combing his 
whiskers, or playing at pri?nero with his 
chaplain, — would pose any mortal not let 
into the true secret; — and therefore 'tis 
worth explaining to the world, was it only 
for the encouragement of those few in it, 
who write not so much to be fed, — as to be 
famous. 

I own, had John de la Casse, the Arch- 
bishop of Benevento, for whose memory 
(notwithstanding his Galatea) I retain the 
highest veneration, — had he been, Sir, a slen- 
der clerk, — of dull wit, slow parts, — costive 
head, and so forth, — he and his Galatea 
might have jogged on together to the age 
of Methuselah for me ; — the phenomenon 
had not been worth a parenthesis. — 

But the reverse of this was the truth . 
John de la Casse was a genius of fine parts 
and fertile fancy; and yet with all these 
great advantages of nature, which should 
have pricked him forwards with his Galatea, 
he lay under an impuissance at the same 
time of advancing above a line and a half 
in the compass of a whole summer's day. 
This disability in his Grace arose from an 
opinion he was afflicted with; — which 
opinion was this, — viz. That whenever a 
Christian was writing a book (not for but 
14 



158 



private amusement, but) where his intent 
and purpose was, bond fide, to print and 
publish it to the world, — his first thoughts 
were always the temptations of the evil 
one. — This was the state of ordinary wri- 
ters: but when a personage in venerable 
character and high station, either in church 
or state, once turned author, — he maintain- 
ed, that from the very moment he took pen 
in hand, — all the Devils in hell broke out 
of their holes to cajole him. — 'Twas Term- 
time with them ; — every thought, first and 
last, was captious ; — how specious and good 
soever, — 'twas all one ; — in whatever form 
or color it presented itself to the imagina- 
tion, — 'twas still a stroke of one or other 
of 'em levell'd at him, and was to be fenced 
off. — So that the life of a writer, whatever 
he might fancy to the contrary, was not so 
much a state of composition, as a state of 
warfare ; and his probation in it, precisely 
that of any other man militant upon earth, 
— both depending alike, not half so much 
upon the degrees of his wit, — as his resist- 
ance. 

My father was hugely pleased with this 
theory of John de la Casse, Archbishop of 
Benevento; and (had it not cramped him 
\ little in his creed) I believe would have 
given ten of the best acres in the Shandy 
estate to have been the broacher of it. — 
How far my father actually believed in the 
Devil, will be seen, when I come to speak 
of my father's religious notions, in the pro- 
gress of this work : 'tis enough to say here, 
as he could not have the honor of it, in the 
literal sense of the doctrine, — he took up 
with the allegory of it; and would often 
say, especially when his pen was a little 
retrograde, there was as much good mean- 
ing, truth, and knowledge, couched under 
the veil of John de la Casse's parabolical 
representation, — as was to be found in any 
one poetic fiction or mystic record of an- 
tiquity. — Prejudice of education, he would 
say, is the Devil, — and the multitudes of 
them which we suck in with our mothers 
milk, are the Devil and all. — We are haunt- 
od with them, brother Toby, in all our lucu- 
orations and researches; ana was a man 
iool enough to submit tamely to what they 
obtruded upon him, — what would his book 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

a farrago of the clack of nurses, and of the 
nonsense of the old women (of both sexes) 
throughout the kingdom. 

This is the best account I am determined 
to give of the slow progress my father 
made in his Tristrapmdia ; at which (as 1 
said) he was three years, and something 
more, indefatigably at work, and, at last, 
had scarce completed, by his own reckoning, 
one half of his undertaking; the misfortune 
was, that I was all that time totally neglect- 
ed and abandoned to my mother ; and, what 
was almost as bad, by the very delay, the 
first part of the work, upon which my father 
had spent the most of his pains, was ren- 
dered entirely useless ; — every day a page 
or two became of no consequence. — 

Certainly it was ordained as a scourge 

upon the pride of human wisdom, That the 
wisest of us all should thus outwit our- 
selves, and eternally forego our purposes 
in the intemperate act of pursuing them. 

In short, my father was so long in all his 
acts of resistance, — or, in other words,- — 
he advanced so very slow with his work, 
and I began to live and get forwards at 
such a rate, that if an event had not hap- 
pened, — which, when we get to it, if it can 
be told with decency, shall not be concealed 
a moment from the reader, — I verily believe, 
I had put by my father, and left him drawing 
a sun-dial, for no better purpose than to be 
buried under ground. 



CHAP. XVII. 

'Twas nothing : — I did not lose two 

drops of blood by it : — 'twas not worth cas- 
ing in a surgeon had he lived next door to 
us. — Thousands suffer by choice, what I did 
by accident. — Doctor Slop made ten times 
more of it than there was occasion. — Some 
men rise by the art of hanging great 
weights upon small wires: — and I am this 
day (August the 10th, 1761) paying pari 
of the price of this man's reputation. — O, 
'twould provoke a stone to see how things 
are carried on in this world ! — The chamber- 
maid had left no ******* *** under the bed. 
Cannot you contrive, master, quoth 



oe! Nothing; — be would add. 
wn away with a vengeance;- 



throwing his! Susannah, lifting up the sash with 
-nothing but! hand, as she spoke, and helping me 



or.e 
■> intr- 






OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

the window-seat with the other, — cannot 
you manage, my dear, for a single time, to 

***•* *** ** *** ****** i 

I was five years old. — Susannah did not 
consider that nothing was well hung in our 
family; — so, slap came the sash down like 

.ightning upon us. Nothing is left, — 

cried Susannah, — nothing is left, — for me, 
but to run my country. 

My uncle Toby's house was a much 
kinder sanctuary; and so Susannah fled 
to it 



150 



CHAP. XVIII. 

When Susannah told the Corporal the 
misadventure of the sash, with all the cir- 
cumstances which attended the murder of 
me, — (as she called it) — the blood forsook 
his cheeks ; — all accessaries in murder being 
principals, — Trim's conscience told him he 
was as much to blame as Susannah ; — and 
if the doctrine had been true, my uncle 
Toby had as much of the bloodshed to an- 
swer for to Heaven as either of 'em ; — so 
that neither reason nor instinct, separate 
nor together, could possibly have guided 
Susannah's steps to so proper an asylum. — 
It is in vain to leave this to the reader's 
imagination: — to form any kind of hypo- 
thesis that will render these propositions 
feasible, he must cudgel his brains sore; 
and to do it without, — he must have such 
brains as no reader ever had before him. — 
Why should I put them either to trial or to 
torture 1 — 'Tis my own affair : I'll explain 
it myself. 



CHAP. XIX. 

*Tis a pity, Trim, said my uncle Toby, 
resting with his Irana upon the Corporal's 
shoulder, as they both stood surveying their 
works, — that we have not a couple of field- 
pieces to mount in the gorge of that new 
redoubt ; — 'twould secure the lines all along 
there, and make the attack on that side 
quite complete. — Get me a couple cast, 
Trim. 

Your Honor shall have them, replied 
Trim, before i.vmorrow morning. 



It was the joy of Trim's heart; nor "'as 
his fertile head ever at a loss for expedients 
in doing it, to supply my uncle Toby, in his 
campaigns, with whatever his fancy called 
for: had it been his last crown, he would 
have sat down and hammered it into a 
paderero, to have prevented a single wish 
in his master. — The Corporal had already, 
— what with cutting off the ends of my 
uncle Toby's spouts, — hacking and chissei- 
ing up the sides of his leaden gutters, — 
melting down his pewter shaving-bason , 
— and going at last, like Lewis the Four 
teenth, on to the top of the church for spare 
ends, &c. — he had that very campaign 
brought no less than eight new battering 
cannons, besides three demi-culverins, into 
the field. My uncle Toby's demand for 
two more pieces for the redoubt, had sei 
the Corporal at w T ork again ; and no better 
resource offering, he had taken the two 
leaden weights from the nursery-window ; 
and as the sash-pulleys, when the lead was 
gone, were of no kind of use, he had taken 
them away also, to make a couple of wheels 
for one of their carriages. 

He had dismantled every sash-window 
in my uncle Toby's house long before, in 
the very same way, — though not always in 
the same order ; for sometimes the pulleys 
had been wanted, and not the lead, — so then 
he began with the pulleys ; and the pulleys 
being picked out, then the lead became use- 
less ; — and so the lead went to pot too. 

A great moral might be picked 

handsomely out of this, but I have not 
time ; — 'tis enough to say, Wherevej the 
demolition began, 'twas equally fatal to the 
sash-window. 



CHAP. XX. 

The Corporal had not taken his measuiea 
so badly in this stroke of artilleryship. but 
that he might have kept the matter en- 
tirely to himself, and left Susannah to have 
sustained the whole weight of the attack 
as she could : — true courage is not content 
with coming off so. — The Corporal, whe- 
ther as general or comptroller of the train, 
— 'twas no matter, — had done that, without 
which, as he imagined, the misfortune cou a 



160 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



never have happened, — at least in Susan- 
nah's hands. — How would your Honors 
have behaved ? — He determined at once, 
not to take shelter behind Susannah, — but 
to give it j and, with this resolution upon 
his mind, he marched upright into the par- 
lor, to lay the whole manoeuvre before my 
uncle Toby. 

My uncle Toby had just then been giving 
Yorick an account of the battle of Stein- 
kirk, and of the strange conduct of Count 
Solmes, in ordering the foot to halt, and 
the horse to march where it could not act; 
which was directly contrary to the king's 
command, and proved the loss of the day. 

There are incidents in some families so 
oat to the purpose of what is going to fol- 
low, — they are scarce exceeded by the in- 
vention of a dramatic writer, — I mean of 
ancient days. — 

Trim, by the help of his fore-finger laid 
flat upon the table, and the edge of his 
hand striking across it at right angles, 
made a shift to tell his story so that priests 
and virgins might have listened to it ; — and 
the story being told, the dialogue went on 
as follows : — 



CHAP. XXI. 

1 would be picqueted to death, 

cried the Corporal, as he concluded Susan- 
nah's story, before I would suffer the woman 
to come to any harm : — 'twas my fault, an' 
please your Honor, — not her's. 

Corporal Trim, replied my uncle Toby, 
putting on his hat. which lay upon the 
table, if any thing can be said to be a fault, 
when the service absolutely requires it 
should be done, 'tis I certainly who deserve 
the blame ; you obeyed your orders. 

Had Count Solmes, Trim, done the same 
at the battle of Steinkirk, said Yorick, 
drolling a little upon the Corporal, who had 
oeen run over by a dragoon in the retreat, 

-lie had saved thee Saved ! cried Trim, 

interrupting Yorick, and finishing the sen- 
tence for him after his own fashion, — he 
Sad saveo five battalions, and please your 
Reverence, every soul of them. — There 
was Cutts's continued the Corporal, clap- 
D»n£ the fore-finger of his right hand upon 



the thumb of his left, and counting round 
his hand, — there was Cutts's, — Mackay's, 
— Angus's, — Graham's, — and Leven's, all 
cut to pieces; — and so had the English 
life-guards, too, had it not been for some 
regiments upon the right, who marcued up 
boldly to their relief, and receited the ene- 
my's fire in their faces, before any one of 
their own platoons discharged a musket. — 
They'll go to Heaven for it, added Trim. 

Trim is right, said my uncle Toby, 

nodding to Yorick; — he's perfectly right. 

What signified his marching the horse, 

continued the Corporal, where the ground 
was so strait, and the French had such a 
nation of hedges, and copses, and ditches, 
and fell'd trees laid this way and that, to 
cover them (as they always have.) — Count 
Solmes should have sent us; — we would 
have fired muzzle to muzzle with them for 
their lives. — There was nothing to be done 
for the horse : — he had his foot shot off, 
however, for his pains, continued the Cor- 
poral, the very next campaign at Landen. 

Poor Trim got his wound there, quoth 

my uncle Toby. 'Twas owing, an 

please your Honor, entirely to Count 
Solmes ; had he drubbed them soundly at 
Steinkirk, they would not have fought us 

at Landen. Possibly not, Trim, said my 

uncle Toby ; though, if they have the ad 
vantage of a wood, or you give them a mo- 
ment's time to intrench themselves, they 
are a nation which will pop and pop foi 
ever at you. There is no way but to march 
coolly up to them, — receive their fire, and 

fall in upon them, pell-mell ; Ding-dong, 

added Trim ; Horse and foot, said my 

uncle Toby ; Helter-skelter, said Trim ; 

Right and left, cried my uncle Toby. 

Blood an' ounds! shouted the Corpo- 
ral: — the battle raged; Yorick drew his 
chair a little to one side for safety ; and, 
after a moment's pause, my uncle Toby, 
sinking his voice a note, resumed the dis- 
course as follows : — 



CHAP. XXII. 

Kino William, said my uncle Toby, ad 
dressing himself to Yorick, was so terribly 
provoked at Count Solmes for disobeving 



OF TRISTRAM ! 

its orders, tnat he would not suffer him to 
come into his presence for many mouths 

atter. 1 fear, answered Yorick, the 

Squire will be as much provoked at the 
Corporal, as the King at the Count. — But 
'twould be singularly hard in this case, 
continued he, if Corporal Trim, who has 
behaved so diametrically opposite to Count 
Solmes, should have the fate to be rewarded 
with the same disgrace : — too often, in this 

world, do thing's take that train. 1 would 

spring a mine, cried my uncle Toby, rising 
up, and blow up my fortifications, and my 
houce with them, and we would perish un- 
der their ruins, ere I would stand by and 

pee it. Trim directed a slight, but a 

grateful bow towards his master, — and so 
the chapter ends. 



CHAP. XXIII. 

— Then, Yorick, replied my uncle Toby, 

you and I will lead the way abreast: 

and do you, Corporal, follow a few paces be- 
hind us. And Susannah, an' please your 

Honor, said Trim, shall be put in the rear. 
'Twas an excellent disposition, and in this 
order, without either drums beating, or 
colors flying, they marched slowly from my 
ancle Toby's house to Shandy-hall. 

1 wish, said Trim, as they entered 

the door, instead of the sash-weights, I had 
cut off the church-spout, as I once thought 

to have done. You have cut off spouts 

enow, replied Yorick. 



CHAP. XXIV. 



As many pictures as have been given of 
my father, how like him soever in different 
airs and attitudes, — not one, or all of them, 
can ever help the reader to any kind of 
preconception of how my father would 
think, speak, or act, upon any untried oc- 
casion or occurrence of life. — There was 
that infinitude of oddities in him, and of 
Jiances along with it. by which handle he 
would take a thing, — it baffled, Sir, all cal- 
culations. — The truth was, his road lay so 
very far on one side, from that wherein \ lator, 
V 



161 

most men travelled, that every object be- 
fore him presented a face and section of 
itself to his eye, altogether different from 
the plan and elevation of it seen by the rest 
of mankind. — In other words, 'twas a dif 
ferent object, and, in course, was differently 
considered. 

This is the true reason that my dear 
Jenny and I, as well as all the world be- 
sides us, have such eternal squabbles about 
nothing. — She looks at her outside ; — I, at 
her in. — How is it possible we should agree 
about her value] 



CHAP. XXV. 



'Tis a point settled, — and I mention it 
for the comfort of Confucius*, who is apt 
to get entangled in telling a plain story, — 
that provided he keeps along the line of his 
story, he may go backwards and forwards 
as he will, 'tis still held to be no digression. 

This being premised, I take the benefit 
of the act of going backwards myself. 



CHAP. XXVI. 

Fifty thousand pannier loads of Devils 
— (not of the Archbishop of Benevento's, — 
I mean of Rabelais's Devils) with their tails 
chopped off by their rumps, could not have 
made so diabolical a scream of it as I did — 
when the accident befell me: it summoned 
up my mother instantly into the nursery ; — 
so that Susannah had but just time to make 
her escape down the back stairs, as my 
mother came up the fore. 

Now, though I was old enough to have 
told the story myself, — and young enough, 
I hope, to have done it without malignity, 
— yet Susannah, in passing by the kitchen, 
for fear of accidents, had left it in short 
hand with the cook, — the cook had told it, 
with a commentary, to Jonathan ; and Jona 
than to Obadian ; so that, by the time my 
father had rung the bell half a dozen times, 



* Mr. Shandy is supposed 
Esq. member for *****, — an< 



H* 



ru mean ***** «■**•• 
not the ( trincM !-*£•• 



J 62 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



to know \i hat was the matter above, — was 
Obadiah enabled to give him a particular 

account of it, just as it had happened. 

I thought as much, said my father, tucking 
up his night-gown, — and so walked up 
stairs. 

One would imagine from this — (though 
for my own part I somewhat question it) — 
that my father, before that time, had actu- 
ally wrote that remarkable chapter in the 
Tristra-pcedia, which to me is the most 
original and entertaining one in the whole 
book, — and that is the chapter upon sash- 
windows, with a bitter Philippic at the end 
of it, upon the forgetfulness of chamber- 
maids. I have but two reasons for thinking 
otherwise. 

First, had the matter been taken into 
■consideration before the event happened, 
my father certainly would '..ave nailed up 
the sash-window for good an' all ; which, 
considering with what difficulty he com- 
posed books, he might have done with ten 
times less trouble than he could have wrote 
the chapter. This argument, I foresee, 
holds good against his writing a chapter, 
■even after the event; but 'tis obviated un- 
der the second reason, which I have the 
honor to offer to the world in support of my 
opinion, that my father did not write the 
chapter upon sash-windows and chamber- 
pots at the time supposed, — and it is this: — 

— That, in order to render the Tristra- 
padia complete, I wrote the chapter my- 
self. 



turning to the section, — de sede vcl subjecti 
circumcisionis, — for he had brought up 
Spenser de Legibus Hebrceorum Rituali- 
bus, — and Maimonides, in order to confront 
and examine us altogether ; 

If it be but right done, quoth he — 

Only tell us, cried my mother, interrupt 

ing him, what herbs 1 For that, replieo 

my father, you must send for Dr. Slop. 

My mother went down, and my fathe? 

went on, reading the section as follows: 
***** * * * 



-Very well, — said my facher 



* * 

* * 

* * 



chap. xxvn. 

My father put on his spectacles, — looked, 
— took them off, — put them into the case, 
— all in less than a statutable minute ; and, 
without opening his lips, turned about and 
walked precipitately down stairs. My mo- 
tner imagined he had stepped down for lint 
and basilicon: but seeing him return with 
a couple of folios under his arm, and Oba- 
diah following him with a large reading- 
desk, she took it for granted it was an 
Herbal, and so drew him a chair to the 
ana-side, that he might consult upon the 
■ausp at his ease. 

If it be but right done, said my father, 



* — nay, if it has that convenience, 
— and so without stopping a moment to 
settle it first in his mind, whether the 
Jews had it from the Egyptians, or the 
Egyptians from the Jews, — he rose up, and 
rubbing his forehead two or three times 
across with the palm of his hand, in the 
manner we rub out the footsteps of care, 
when evil has trod lighter upon us than we 
foreboded, — he shut the book, and walked 

down stairs. Nay, said he, mentioning 

the name of a different great nation upon 
every step as he set his foot upon it, — if the 
Egyptians, — the Syrians, — the Phoenicians, 
— the Arabians, — the Cappadocians, — if the 
Colchi and Troglodytes did it, — if Solon 
and Pythagoras submitted, — what is Tris- 
tram? — Who am I, that I should fret or 
fume one moment about the matter ! 



CHAP. XXVIII. 

Dear Yorick, said my father smiling 
(for Yorick had broke his rank with my 
'uncle Toby, in coming through the narrow 
! entry, and so had stept first into the parlor) 
! this Tristram of ours, I find, comes very 
hardly by all his religious rites. Never 
|was the son of Jew, Christian, Turk, o 
| Infidel, initiated into them in so oblique 

and slovenly a manner. But he is no 

I worse, I trust, said Yorick. There has 

been certainly, continued my father, the 
deuce and all to do in some part or other 
of the ecliptic, when this offspring of mine 
'was formed. That you are a better 



Midge of than I, replied Vorick. Astrol- 
ogers, quoth my father, know better than 
us both : — the trine and sextile aspects have 
jumped awry, — or the opposite of their as- 
cendants have not hit it, as they should,— 
or the lords of the genitures (as they call 
them) have been at bo-peep, — or something 
has been wrong above or below with us. 

Tis possible, answered Yorick. But 

is the child, cried my uncle Toby, the 
worse] The Troglodytes say not, re- 
plied my father. — And your theologists, 

Yorick, tell us Theologically 1 ? said 

Yorick ; — or speaking after the manner of 
apothecaries ? * — statesmen ] f — or washer 
women ! | 

I'm not sure, replied my father; — 

but they tell us, brother Toby, he's the 

better for it. Provided, said Yorick, you 

travel him into Egypt. Of that, answer- 
ed my father, he will have the advantage, 
when he sees the Pyramids. 

Now, every word of this, quoth my 

uncle Toby, is Arabic to me. 1 wish, 

said Yorick. 'twas so to half the world 

§ Ilus, continued my father, circum- 
cised his whole army one morning. Not 

without a court-martial? cried my uncle 

Toby. Though the learned, continued 

he, taking no notice of my uncle Toby's 
remark, but turning to Yorick, — are greatly 
divided still, who Ilus was; — some say 
Saturn : — some, the Supreme Being ; — 
others, no more than a brigadier-general 

under Pharaoh-Neco. Let him be who 

he will, said my uncle Toby, I know not 
by what article of war he could justify it. 

The controvert! sts, answered my father, 
assign two-and-twenty different reasons for 
it: — others, indeed, who have drawn their 
penson the opposite side of the question, have 
shown the world the futility of the greatest 
part of them. — But then again our best po- 
lemic divines, 1 wish there was not a 

polemic divine, said Yorick, in the kingdom ; 
— one ounce of practical divinity — is worth 
a painted ship-load of all their Reverences 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 1<>3 

have imported these fifty yonrs. Pruv- 

Mr. Yorick, quoth my uncle Toby, — do tei 

me what a polemic divine is? The besl 

description, Captain Shandy, I have ever 
read, is of a couple of 'em, replied Yorick, 
in the account of the battle fought, single 
hands, betwixt Gymnast and Captain Tri- 

pet; which I have in my pocket. 1 beg 

I may hear it, quoth my uncle Toby, earn- 
estly You shall, said Yorick, And 

as the Corporal is waiting for me at tl 2 

door, and I know the description of a 

battle will do the poor fellow more good 
than his supper, — I beg, brother, you'll give 
him leave to come in. — With all my soul, 

said my father. Trim came in, erect ana 

happy as an emperor ; and having shut the 
door, Yorick took a book from his right- 
hand coat-pocket, and read, or pretended tc 
read, as follows: — 



* Xa^EKrjs l'dffs, Kal Svaidry aTraWayrj, r}v a v vQpa<a 
KaXovaiv. — PHILO 

+ Ta Ttfti6[xtva twv iOwv iroAuyovwrara, Kal iroXu- 
atdpwTzoTara c'tvai. 

t KaOapidrjlog eiviKCV. — BOCHART. 

$'C 'Xoj, ruaiSoia ircpiTip.veTai. ravTo iro7>i<rai Kal tw? 
iu av'rti ffvu/ia^uf KaravayKnadi- — Sa.NCHUNIATHO. 



CHAP. XXIX. 

"Which words being heard by all 

" the soldiers which were there, divers of 
" them, being inwardly terrified, did shrink 
" back and make room for the assailant. — 
" All this did Gymnast very well remark 
" and consider ; and, therefore, making as 
"if he would have alighted from off his 
" horse, as he was poising himself on the 
" mounting side, he most nimbly (with hia 
" short sword by his thigh) shifting his feet 
" in the stirrup, and performing the stirrup- 
" leather feat, whereby after the inclining 
"of his body downwards, he forthwith 
"launched himself aloft into the air, and 
"placed both his feet together upon the 
"saddle, standing upright, with his back 
"turned towards his horse's head. — Now 
"(said he) my case goes forward. Then, 
" suddenly, in the same posture wherein he 
" was, he fetched a gambol upon one foot, 
"and turning to the left hand, failed not To 
" carry his body perfectly round, just into 
"his former position, without missing one 

"jot. Ha! said Tripet, I will not do 

" that at this time ; and not without caus** 

" Well, said Gymnast, I have failed,- • 

" I will undo this leap ; then with a mai 
"vellous strength and agility, turning to 
" wards the right hand, ne fetched another 



164 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



" frisking gambol as before; which done, 
" he set his right-hand thumb upon the bow 
"of the saddle, raised himself up, and 
"sprung- into the air, poising- and upholding 
"his whole weight upon the muscle and 
" nerve of the said thumb, and so turned 
"and whirled himself about three times, 
" at the fourth, reversing his body, and over- 
" turning it upside down, and foreside back, 
" without touching any thing, he brought 
" himself betwixt the horse's two ears, and 
"then giving himself a jerking swing, he 
" seated himself upon the crupper." — 

[This can't be fighting, said my uncle 

Toby. The Corporal shook his head at 

it. Have patience, said Yorick.] 

" Then (Tripet) pass'd his right leg over 
" his saddle, and placed himself en croup. 
" — But, said he, 'twere better for me to get 
"into the saddle; then putting the thumbs 
"of both hands upon the crupper before 
" him, and thereupon leaning himself, as 
" upon the only supporters of his body, he 
" incontinently turned heels over head into 
" the air, and straight found himself be- 
" twixt the bow of the saddle, in a tolerable 
"seat; then springing into the air with a 
"summerset, he turned him about like a 
" wind-mill, and made above an hundred 
" frisks, turns, and demipommadas." — Good 
fiod ! cried Trim, losing all patience 



one home thrust of a bayonet is worth it all. 

1 think so, too, replied Yorick. — 

I am of a contrary opinion, quoth my 
tether. 



CHAP. XXX. 

— No ; — I thing I have advanced nothing, 
replied my father, making answer to a 
question which Yorick had taken the lib- 
erty to put to him, — I have advanced no- 
thing in the Tristra-pcedia, but what is 
as clear as any one proposition in Euclid. 

Reach me, Trim, that book from off 

tht scrutoire. — It has oft-times been in my 
mind, continued my father, to have read it 
over, both to you, Yorick, and to my bro- 
ther Toby ; and 1 think it a little unfriendly 
«i myself, in not having done it long ago. 
- -Shall we have a short chapter or two 

now, and a chapter or two hereafter, 

<** occasions serve, and so on, till we get 



through the whole? My uncle Toby and 
Yorick made the obeisance which was 
proper; and the Corporal, though he was not 
included in the compliment, laid his hand 
upon his breast, and made bis bow at the 
same time. — The company smiled. — Trim, 
quoth my father, has paid the full price for 
staying out the entertainment. — He did not 
seem to relish the play, replied Yorick. 

'Twas a Tom-fool battle, an' please 

your Reverences, of Captain Tripet's and 
that other officer, making so many summer- 
sets as they advanced . the French 

come on capering now and then in that 
way, — but not quite so much. 

My uncle Toby never felt the conscious- 
ness of his existence with more compla- 
cency, than what the Corporal's, and his 
own reflections, made him do at that mo- 
ment; — he lighted his pipe, — Ycrick drew 
his chair closer to the table, — Trim snufFd 
the candle, — my father stirr'd up the fire, 

— took up the book, cough'd twice, and 

began. 



CHAP. XXXI. 

The first thirty pages, said my father 

turning over the leaves, are a little 

dry ; and as they are not closely connected 
with the subject, — for the present we'll pass 
them by : 'tis a prefatory introduction, con- 
tinued my father, or an introductory preface 
(for I am not determined which name to 
give it) upon political or civil government, 
the foundation of which being laid in the 
first conjunction betwixt male and female, 
for procreation of the species, — I was in- 
sensibly led into it. — 'Twas natural, said 
Yorick. 

The original of society, continued my 
father, I'm satisfied, is, what Politian tells 
us, i. e. merely conjugal, and nothing more 
than the getting together of one man and 
one woman ; — to which, (according to He- 
siod) the philosopher adds a servant : — but 
supposing, in the first beginning, there 
were no men-servants born, — he lays the 
foundation of it, in a man, —a woman, — 
and a bull. — —I believe 'tis an ox, quoth 
Yorick, quoting the passage (vhov ph 7rpu»7io- 

7ara, yvva~iKa Tt, j3su t apOrrypa) A bull must 

have given more trouble than his head was 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



105 



worth. — but there is a better reason still, 
said my father, (dipping his pen into his 
ink ;) for the ox, being the most patient of 
tnimals, and the most useful withal in 
filing- the ground for their nourishment, — 
was the prnperest instrument, and emblem 
too, for the new-joined couple, that the 
creation could have associated with them. 
— And there is a stronger reason, added my 

uncle Toby, than them all for the ix 

My father had not power to take his pen 
out of his inkhorn, till he had heard my un- 
cle Toby's reason. For, when the ground 

was tilled, said my uncle Toby, and made 
worth inclosing, then they began to secure 
it by walls and ditches, which was the 

origin of fortification. True, true, dear 

Toby, cried my father, striking out the bull, 
and putting the ox in his place. 

My father gave Trim a nod, to snuff the 
candle, and resumed his discourse. 

1 enter upon this speculation, said 

my father, carelessly, and half shutting the 
book, as he went on, merely to show the 
foundation of the natural relation between 
a father and his child; the right and juris- 
diction over whom he acquires these se ve- 
ra 1 ways : — 

1st, by marriage. 

2d, by adoption. 

3d, by legitimation. 

And, 4th, by procreation ; all which I 
consider in their order. 

I lay a slight stress upon one of them, 
replied Yorick, — the act, especially where 
it ends there, in my opinion, lays as little 
obligation upon the child, as it conveys 

power to the father. You are wrong, — 

said my father, argutely ; and for this plain 
reason ******* 

* * ****** 

* * ****** 

1 own, added my father, that the off- 
spring, upon this account, is not so under the 
power and jurisdiction of the mother. — But 
the reason, replied Yorick, equally holds good 
for her. — She is under authority herself, 
said my father : — and besides, continued my 
father, nodding his head, and laying his 
finger upon the side of his nose, as he as- 
signed his rea?on, — "she is not the princi- 
" pal agent," Yorick. — In what 1 quoth my 
uncle Toby, stopping his pipe. — Though, 
oy all means, added my father, (not attend- 



ing to my uncle Toby) " The son ought tc 
" pay her respect," as you may read, Yorick, 
at large, in the first book of the Institutes 
of Justinian, at the eleventh title, and tht. 
tenth section. 1 can read it as well, re- 
plied Yorick, in the Catechism. 



CHAP. IX. 



Trim can repeat every word of it by 
heart, quoth my uncle Toby. — Pugh ! said 
my father, not caring to be interrupted 
with Trim's saying his Catechism. — He 
can, upon my honor, replied my uncle Toby. 
— Ask him, Mr. Yorick, any question you 
please. 

— The Fifth Commandment, Trim — said 
Yorick, speaking mildly, and with a gentle 
nod, as to a modest catechumen. — The Cor- 
poral stood silent. You don't ask him 

right, said my uncle Toby, raising his voice, 
and giving it rapidly like the word of com- 
mand ; — the fifth 1 — cried my uncle Toby. 

1 must begin with the first, an' please 

your Honor, said the Corporal. — 

— Yorick could not forbear smiling. — 
Your Reverence does not consider, said the 
Corporal, shouldering his stick like a mus- 
ket, and marching into the middle of the 
room, to illustrate his position, — that 'tis 
exactly the same thing as doing one's exer- 
cise in the field. 

" Join your right hand to your firelock,' 
cried the Corporal, giving the word of 
command, and performing the motion. 

" Poise your firelock," cried the Corpo- 
ral, doing the duty still of both adjutant 
and private man. — 

" Rest your firelock," — one motion, an' 
please your Reverence, you see leads into 
another. — If his Honor will begin but with 
the first — 

The first ? — cried my uncle Toby, setting 
his hand upon his side. — * * * * 
****** 

The second! — cried my uncle Toby, wav- 
ing his tobacco-pipe, as he would have done 
his sword'at the head of a regiment. — The 
Corporal went through his manual with 
exactness ; and having honored his father 
and mother, made a low bow, and fell oack 
to the side of the room. 

Every thing in the world, said my father 



160 LIFE AND OPINIONS 

is big- with jest, — and has wit in it, and 
instruction too, — if we can but find it out. 

— Here is the scaffold-work of instruc- 
tion, its true point of folly, without the 
building behind it. 

— Here is the glass for pedagogues, pre- 
ceptors, tutors, governors, gerund-grinders, 
and bear-leaders, to view themselves in, 
in their true dimensions. 

Oh ! there is a husk and shell, Yorick, 

which grows up with learning, which their 

unskilfulness knows not how to fling away ! 

Sciences may be learned by rote, but 

Wisdom not. 

Yorick thought my father inspired. 

I will enter into obligations this moment, 
said my father, to lay out all my aunt 
Dinah's legacy in charitable uses, (of 
which, by the bye, my father had no high 
opinion) if the Corporal has any one de- 
terminate idea annexed to any one word 
he has repeated. — Prithee, Trim, quoth 
my father turning round to him, — what 
dost thou mean by " honoring thy father 
and mother?" 

Allowing them, an' please your Honor, 
three half-pence a day out of my pay, when 

they grow old. And didst thou do that, 

Trim"? said Yorick. — He did, indeed, re- 
plied my uncle Toby. — Then, Trim, said 
Yorick, springing out of his chair, and 
taking the Corporal by the hand, thou art 
the best commentator on that part of the 
Decalogue ; and I honor thee more for it, 
Corporal Trim, than if thou hadst had a 
hand in the Talmud itself. 



chap, xxxin. 

blessed health ! cried my father, 
making an exclamation as he turned over 
the leaves to the next chapter, — thou art 
above all gold and treasure ; 'tis thou who 
enlargest the soul, — and openest all its 
power to receive instruction and to relish 

virtue. He that has thee, has little more 

to wish for ; and he that is so wretched 

us to want thee, — wants every thing with 
t hee. 

1 1 lave concentrated all that can be said 
i«iH»n this important head, said my father,] 



into very little room , therefore we'll reat, 
the chapter quite through. 

My father read as follows : 

" The whole secret of health depending 
" upon the due contention for mastery be- 
" twixt the radical heat and the radical 
" moisture," You have proved that mat- 
ter of fact, I suppose, above, said Yorick. 
Sufficiently, replied my father. 

In saying this, my father shut the book, 

not as if he resolved to read no more of 

it, for he kept his fore-finger in the chaptei : 

not pettishly, — for he shut the book 

slowly ; his thumb resting, when he had 
done it, upon the upper side of the cover, as 
his three fingers supported the lower side of 
it, without the least compressive violence. — 

I have demonstrated the truth of that 
point, quoth my father, nodding to Yorick, 
most sufficiently, in the preceding chapter. 

Now, could the man in the moon be told, 
that a man in the earth had wrote a chapter, 
sufficiently demonstrating, That the secret 
of all health depended upon the due conten- 
tion for mastery betwixt the radical heat 
and the radical moisture, — and that he had 
managed the point so well, that there was 
not one single word wet or dry upon radi- 
cal beat or radical moisture, throughout the 
whole chapter, — or a single syllable in -it, 
pro or con, directly or indirectly, upon 
the contention betwixt these two powers 
in any part of the animal economy, 

" O thou eternal Maker of all beings !" 
— he would cry, striking his breast with 

his right hand, (in case he had one) 

" Thou whose power and goodness can 
" enlarge the faculties of thy creatures to 
" this infinite degree of excellence and 
" perfection, — What have we Moonites 
"doner 



CHAP. XXXIV 

With two strokes, the one at Hippoc- 
rates, the other at Lord Verulam, did my 
father achieve it. 

The stroke at the prince of ph) sicians, 
with which he began, was no mere than 
a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint 
of the ars longa, — and vita brevis. — Life 
short, cried my father, —and the art erf 



healing 1 tedious ' »»d who are we to thank 
for both the on'-) and the other, but the 
ignorance of o>'aoks themselves, — and the 
stage-loads of chemical nostrums, and peri- 
patetic lumber, with which in all ages they 
have first" flatter'd the world, and at last 
deceived it ! 

O my Lord Verulam ! cried my 

father, turning trom Hippocrates, and mak- 
ing his second stroke at him, as the prin- 
cipal of nostrum-mongers, and the fittest 
to be made an example of to the rest, — 
What shall I say to thee, my great lord 
Verulam 1 What shall I say to thy inter- 
nal spirit, — thy opium, thy saltpetre, — 
thy greasy unction, — thy dai.y purges, thy 
nightly glisters, and succedaneums] 

My father was never at a loss what 

to say to any man, upon any subject ; and 
nad the least occasion for the exordium of 
any man breathing: how he dealt with his 
lordship's opinion, — you shall see; — but 

when 1 know not : — we must first see 

what his lordship's opinion was. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 107 

enter; — nor could any one get out. This 

put a stop to all perspiration, sensible and 
insensible, which being the cause of so many 
scurvy distempers, — a course of glisters was 
requisite to carry off redundant humors, — 
and render the system complete. 

What my father had to say to my lord of 
Verulam's opiates, his saltpetre, and greasy 
unctions and glisters, you shall read, — but 
not to-day — or to-morrow : — time presses 

upon me, — my reader is impatient, ( 

must get forwards. You shall read the 

chapter at your leisure, (if you choose it) 
as soon as ever the Tristram-pced'ta is pub- 
lished. 

Sufficeth it at present to say, my father 
levelled the hypothesis with the ground, 
and in doing that, the learned know, he 
built up and established his own. — 



CHAP. XXXV. 






" The two great causes which conspire 
11 with each other to shorten life, says Lord 
" Verulam, are, first, — 

" The internal spirit, which, like a gentle 
" flame, wastes the body down to death : — 
" and, secondly, the external air, that 
" parches the body up to ashes: — which two 
" enemies attacking us on both sides of our 
" bodies together, at length destroy our or- 
" gans, and render them unfit to carry on 
" the functions of life." 

This being the state of the case, the road 
to longevity was plain ; nothing more being 
required, says his lordship, but to repair the 
waste committed by the internal spirit, by 
making the substance of it more thick and 
dense, by a regular course of opiates on one 
side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on 
the other, by three grains and a half of salt- 
petre every morning before you get up. — 

Still this frame of ours was left exposed 
to the inimical assaults of the air without ; 
— but this was fenced off again by a course 
of greasy unctions, which so fully saturated 
lite pores of the skin, that no spicula could [upon that head 



CHAP. XXXVI. 

The whole secret of health, said my 
father, beginning the sentence again, de- 
pending evidently upon the due contention 
betwixt the radical heat and radical mois- 
ture within us; — the least imiginable skill 
had been sufficient to have maintained it, 
had not the schoolmen confounded the task, 
merely, (as Van Hemont the famous chym- 
ist has proved) by all along mistaking the 
radical moisture for the tallow and fat of 
animal bodies. 

Now the radical moisture is not the tal- 
low or fat of animals, but an oily and bal- 
samous substance ; for the fat or tallow, as 
also the phlegm or watery parts, are cold : 
whereas the oily and balsamous parts are of 
a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for 
the observation of Aristotle, " Quod omne 
animal post coitum est triste." 

Now it is certain, that the radical heat 
lives in the radical moisture ; but whether 
vice versa, is a doubt ; however, when the 
one decays, the other decays also ; and then 
is produced, either an unnatural heat, which 
causes an unnatural dryness, — or an unnati»- 
ral moisture, which causes dropsies : — 
so that if a child, as he grows up, can but 
be taught to avoid running into fire or wa'*»r, 
as either of them threaten his destruction. 
— 'twill be all that is needful to be dono 



16 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



CHAP. XXXVII. 

The description of the siege of Jericho 
itself, couid not have engaged the attention 
of my uncle Toby more powerfully than 
the last chapter ; — his eyes were fixed upon 
my father, throughout it; — he never men- 
tioned radical heat and radical moisture, 
but my uncle Toby took his pipe out of his 
mouth and shook his head ; and as soon as 
the chapter was finished, he beckoned to 
the Corporal to come close to his chair, to 
ask him the following question, — aside: — * 



It was at the siege of Limerick, an' please 
your honor, replied the Corporal, making a 
bow. 

The poor fellow and I, quoth my uncle 
Toby, addressing himself to my father, were 
scarce able to crawl out of our tents, at 
the time the siege of Limerick was raised, 
upon the very account you mention. — Now 
what can have got into that precious noddle 
of thine, my dear brother Toby 1 cried my 

father mentally. By heaven ! continued 

he, communing still with himself, it would 
puzzle an GEdipus to bring it in point. 

I believe, an' please your Honor, quoth 
the Corporal, that if it had not been for the 
quantity of brandy we set fire to every night, 
and the claret and cinnamon with which I 
plied your Honor off, — And the Geneva, 
Trim, added my uncle Toby, which did us 
more good than all, — I verily believe, con- 
tinued the Corporal, we had both, an' please 
your Honor, left our lives in the trenches, 
and been buried in them too. — The noblest 
grave, Corporal, cried my uncle Toby, his 
eyes sparkling as he spoke, that a soldier 

could wish to lie down in ! But a pitiful 

death for him ! an' please your Honor, re- 
plied the Corporal. 

All this was as much Arabic to my father, 
as the rites of the Colchi and Troglodytes 
had been before to my uncle Toby : my 
father could not determine whether he was 
to frown or to smile. 

My uncle Toby, turning to Yorick, re- 
sumed the case at Limerick, more intelligi- 
bly than he had begun it, --and so settled 
the point for my father at once. 



CHAP. XXXVI11. 

It was undoubtedly, said my uncle Toby 
a great happiness for myself and the Cor 
poral, that we had all along a burning fever, 
attended with a most raging thirst, during 
the whole five-and-twenty days the flux 
was upon us in the camp ; otherwise, what 
my brother calls the radical moisture, must, 
as I conceive it, inevitably have got the 
better. My father drew in his lungs top- 
full of air, and looking up, blew it forth 
again, as slowly as he possibly could. 

It was Heaven's mercy to us, continued 
my uncle Toby, which put it into the Cor- 
poral's head to maintain that due contention 
betwixt the radical heat and the radical 
moisture, by reinforcing the fever, as he 
did all along, with hot wine and spices; 
whereby the Corporal kept up (as it were) 
a continual firing; so that the radical heat 
stood its ground from the beginning to the 
end, and was a fair match for the moisture, 
terrible as it was. — Upon my honor, added 
my uncle Toby, you might have heard the 
contention within our bodies, brother Shandy, 

twenty toises. If there was no firing, 

said Yorick. 

Well, said my father, with a full aspira- 
tion, and pausing a while after the word, — 
was I a judge, and the laws of the country 
which made me one permitted it, I would 
condemn some of the worst malefactors, 
provided they had their clergy, 

Yorick, foreseeing the sentence was 

likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his 
hand upon my father's breast, and begged 
he would respite it for a few minutes, till 
he asked the Corporal a question. Prithee, 
Trim, said Yorick, without staying for my 
father's leave, — tell us honestly, — what is 
thy opinion concerning this self-same radical 
heat and radical moisture 1 — 

With humble submission to his Honor's 
better judgment, quoth the Corporal, making 

a bow to my uncle Toby, Speak thy 

opinion freely, Corporal, said my uncle 

Toby. The poor fellow is my servant, 

not my slave, added my uncle Toby, turning 
to my father. 

The Corporal put his hat under his left 
arm, and with his stick hanging UDon the 



wrist of it, by a black thong- split into a 
tassel about the knot, he marched up to the 
ground where he had performed his cate- 
chism ; then touching his under jaw with 
the thumb and finger of his right hand be- 
fore he opened his mouth, — he delivered his 
notion thus: — 



CHAP. XXXIX. 

Just as the Corporal was hemming to 

begin, — in waddled Dr. Slop. Tis not 

two-pence matter,— the Corporal shall go 
on in the next chapter, let who will come 
in. 

Well, my good Doctor, cried my father, 
sportively, for the transitions of his passions 
were unaccountably sudden; — and what 
has this whelp of mine to say to the mat- 
ter?— 

Had my father been asking after the am- 
putation of the tail of a puppy-dog, — he 
could not have done it in a more careless 
air: the system which Dr. Slop had laid 
down, to treat the accident by, no way al- 
lowed of such a mode of inquiry. — He sat 
down. — 

Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, in a 
manner which could not go unanswered, — 

in what condition is the boy? 'Twill 

end in a phimosis, replied Dr. Slop. 

I am no wiser than I was, quoth my uncle 
Toby, returning his pipe into his mouth. 

Then let the Corporal go on, said my 

father, with his medical lecture. The 

Corporal made a bow to his old friend, Dr. 
Slop, and then delivered his opinion con- 
cerning radical heat and radical moisture, 
in the following: words : — 



CHAP. XL. 



The city of Limerick, the siege of which 
was begun under his majesty King Wil- 
liam himself, the year after I went into the 
army, — lies, an' please your Honors, in the 
middle of a devilish wet swampy country. — 
'Tis quite surrounded, said rny uncle Toby, 
with the Shannon: and is, by its situation, 
W 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 169 

one of the strongest fortified places in Ire- 
land. — 

I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr. 

Slop, of beginning a medical lecture. 

'Tis all true, answered Trim. Ther I 

wish the faculty would follow the cut of X 

said Yorick. 'Tis all cut through, an 

please your Reverence, said the Corpora 1 , 
with drains and bogs : and besides, there 
was such a quantity of rain fell during the 
siege, the whole country was like a puddle; 
— 'twas that, and nothing else, which 
brought on the flux, and which had like to 
have killed both his Honor and myself. 
Now there was no such thing, after the 
first ten days, continued the Corporal, for a 
soldier to lie dry in his tent, without cut- 
ting a ditch round it, to draw off" the water : 
— nor was that enough for those who could 
afford it, as his Honor could, without set- 
ting fire every night to a pewter dish full 
of brandy, which took off the damp of the 
air, and made the inside of the tent as warm 
as a stove. 

And what conclusion dost thou draw, Cor- 
poral Trim, cried my father, from all these 
premises'? — 

I infer, an' please your Worship, replied 
Trim, that the radical moisture is nothing 
in the world but ditch-water ; — and that the 
radical heat of those who can go to the ex- 
pense of it, is burnt brandy: — the radica 
heat and moisture of a private man, an 
please your Honor, is nothing but ditch- 
water — and a dram of Geneva ; — and give 
us but enough of it, with a pipe of tobacco, 
to give us spirits and drive away the va- 
pors, — we know not what it is to fear 
death. 

I am at a loss, Captain Shandy, quoth 
Doctor Slop, to determine in which branch 
of learning your servant shines most , 

whether in physiology or divinity. Slop 

had not forgot Trim's comment upon the 
sermon. 

It is but an hour ago, replied Yorick, 
since the Corporal was examined in tht 
latter, and passed muster with great hon 
or. 

The radical heat and moisture, quotn 
Doctor Slop, turning to my father, you 
must know, is the basis and foundation e 
our being, — as the root of a tree is tn« 



15 



\ 



170 LIFE AND 

source a. id principle of its vegetation. — It 
is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and 
may be preserved sundry ways ; but prin- 
cipally, in my opinion, by consubstantials, 
impriments and occludents. — Now this poor 
fellow, continued Dr. Slop, pointing to the 
Corporal, has had the misfortune to have 
neard some superficial empiric discourse 

upon this nice point. That he has, — said 

my father. Very likely, — said my uncle. 

I'm sure of it, — quoth Yorick. 



CHAP. XLI. 

Doctor Slop being called out to look at 
a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave my 
father an opportunity of going on with an- 
other chapter in the Tristra-pczdia. 

Come ! cheer up, my lads ; I'll show you 
land ; — for when we have tugged through 
that chapter, the book shall not be opened 
again this twelve-month. Huzza ! — 



CHAP. XLII. 

Five years with a bib under his 

chin; 

Four years in travelling from Christ- 
cross-row to Malachi ; 

A year and a half in learning to write 
his own name ; 

Seven long years and more ruTrrwing it, 
at Greek and Latin ; 

Four years at his probations and his ne- 
gations ; — the fine statue still lying in the 
middle of the marble block, and nothing 
done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out ! 
— 'Tis a piteous delay ! — Was not the great 
Julius Scaliger within an ace of never 
getting his tools sharpened at all 1 — Forty- 
four years old was he before he could man- 
age his Greek ; — and Peter Damianus, Lord 
Bishop of Ostia, as all the world knows, 
could not so much as read when he was of 
man's estate ; — and Baldus himself, as emi- 
nent as he turned out after, entered upon 
the law so late in life, that every body im- 
agined he intended to be an advocate in the 
other world. No wonder, when Eudamidas, 
the son ot Archidamas, heard Xenocrates 



OPINIONS 

at seventy-five disputing about wisdom, that 
he asked gravely, — " If the old man be yet 
"disputing and inquiring concerning wis- 
"dom, — what time will he have to make 
" use of it '.'" 

Yorick listened to my father with great 
attention ; there was a seasoning of wisdom 
unaccountably mixed up with his strangest 
whims ; and he had sometimes such illumi- 
nations in the darkest of his eclipses, as al- 
most atoned for them. — Be wary, Sir, when 
you imitate him. 

I am convinced, Yorick, continued my 
father, half reading and half discoursing, 
that there is a north-west passage to the in- 
tellectual world ; and that the soul of man 
has shorter ways of going to work, in fur- 
nishing itself with knowledge and instruc- 
tion, than we generally take with it. — But, 
alack ! all fields have not a river or a spring 
running beside them ; — every child, Yorick, 
has not a parent to point it out. 

— The whole entirely depends, added my 
father, in a low voice, upon the auxiliary 
verbs, Mr. Yorick. 

Had Yorick trod upon Virgil's snake, ho 
could not have looked more surprised. — ] 
am surprised too, cried my father, observing 
it ; — and I reckon it as one of the greatest 
calamities which ever befell the republic of 
letters, That those who have been intrusted 
with the education of our children, and 
whose business it was to open their minds, 
and stock them early with ideas, in order 
to set the imagination loose upon them, have 
made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in 
doing it, as they have done ; — so that, ex 
cept Raymond Lullius, and the elder Pele- 
grini, the last of whom arrived to such per- 
fection in the use of 'em, with his topics, 
that, in a few lessons, he could teach a young 1 
gentleman to discourse with plausibility 
upon any subject, pro and con, and to say and 
write all that could be spoken or written 
concerning it, without blotting a word, to 

the admiration of all who beheld him. 1 

should be glad, said Yorick, interrupting 
my father, to be made to comprehend this 
matter. You shall, said my father. 

The highest stretch of improvement a 
single word is capable of, is a high meta- 
phor ; — for which, in my opinion, the idea ia 
generally the worse, and not the better: — 
but, be that as it may, — when the mind haa 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



171 



done that with it, — there is an end ; — the 
mind and the idea are at rest, — until a sec- 
ond idea enters : — and so on. 

Now the use of the Auxiliaries is, at 
once to set the soul a-going -by herself upon 
the materials as they are brought her; and 
by the versability of this great engine, round 
' which they are twisted, to open new tracts 
of inquiry, and make every idea engender 
millions. 

You excite my curiosity greatly, said 
Yorick. 

For my own part, quoth my uncle Toby, 

1 have given it up.- The Danes, an' 

please your Honor, quoth the Corporal, who 
were on the left at the siege of Limerick, 

were all auxiliaries. And very good 

ones, «aid my uncle Toby. And your 

Honor roul'd with them, — captains with 

captains, — very well, said the Corporal. 

But the auxiliaries, Trim, my brother is talk- 
ing about, answered my uncle Toby, — I con- 
ceive to be different things. 

You do ? said my father, rising up. 



CHAP. XLITI. 

My father took a single turn across the 
room, then sat down and finished the chap- 
ter. 

The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in 
here, continued my father, are, am, was, 
have, had, do, did, make, made, suffer, shall, 
should, will, would, can, could, owe, ought, 
used, or is ivont ; — and these varied with 
tenses, present, past, future, and conjuga- 
ted with the verb see, — or with these ques- 
tions added to them : — Is it? Was it? Will 
it be ? Would it be ? May it be ? Might it 
be ? — and these again put negatively, — Is 
il not? Was it not? Ought it not ? — or af- 
firmatively, It is, It was, It ought to be : — 



or chronologically, — Has it been always y 
Lately ? How long ago? or hypothetically 
— If it ivas? If it was not? — what would 
follow .' — If the French should beat the En- 
glish] If the Sun go out of the Zodiac? 

Now by the right use and application of 
these, continued my father, in which a child's 
memory should be exercised, there is no one 
idea can enter his brain, how barren soever, 
but a magazine of corruptions and con- 
clusions may be drawn forth from it. 

Didst thou ever see a white bear ? cried my 
father, turning his head round to Trim, who 
stood at the back of the chair. — Nr>, an 
please your Honor, replied the Corporal. 
-But thou couldst discourse about one, 

Trim, said my father, in case of need ! 

How is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle 
Toby, if the Corporal never saw one ? — 'Tis 
the fact I want, replied my father ; — and the 
possibility of it is as follows : — 

A white bear ! Very well. Have I ever 
seen one? Might I ever have seen one? 
Am I ever to see one ? Ought I ever to 
have seen one ? Or can I ever see one ? 

Would I had seen a white bear ! (for how 
can I imagine it?) 

If I should see a white bear, what should 
I say ? If I should never see a white bear, 
what then ? * 

If I never have, can, must, or shall see a 
white bear alive, — have I ever seen the 
skin of one? Did I ever see one painted? — 
described? Have I never dreamed of one? 

Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, bro- 
thers, or sisters, ever see a white bear . 
What would they give ? How would they 
behave ? How would the white bear have 
behaved? Is he wild? Tame? Terrible* 
Rough? Smooth? 

— Is the white bear worth seeing 1 

— Is there no sin in it ? 

Is it better than a black one ? 



THE 

LIFE AND OPINIONS 

OP 

Kvi&tvam Stiautrg, 

GENTLEMAN. 



CHAP. I. 

W E'LL not stop two moments, my dear 
Sir, — only as we have got through these 
seven volumes,* (do, Sir, sit down upon a seat 
— they are , better than nothing) let us just 
Jook back upon the country we have passed 
through. — 

What a wilderness has it been ! and 
what a mercy that we have not both of us 
been lost, or devoured by wild beasts in it! 

Did you think the world itself, Sir, had 
contained such a number of Jack-Asses 7 — 
How they view'd and review'd us, as we 
passed over the rivulet at the bottom of 
that little valley ! — and when we climbed 
over that hill, and were just getting out of 
sight, — good God ! what a braying did they 
all set up together ! 

— Prithee, Shepherd, who keeps all these 
Jack-Asses ] * * * 

— Heaven be their comforter — What! 
are they never curried ! — are they never 
taken in in winter? — Bray, — bray, — bray, 
bray on, — the world is deeply your debtor ; 
— louder still — that's nothing; — in good 
sooth, you are ill used. — Was I a Jack-Ass, 
I solemnly declare, I would bray in G-sol- 
re-ut from morning, even unto night. 



CHAP. II. 



When my father had danced his white 
bear backwards and forwards through half 
a dozen pages, he closed the book for good 
and all, — and, in a kind of triumph, re-de- 
.ivered it into Trim's hand, with a nod to 
iay it upon the scrutoire where he found it. 



* According to the original editions. 



Tristram, said he, shall be made to con« 
jugate every word in the dictionary back- 
wards and forwards the same way : — every 
word, Yorick, by this means, you see, is 
converted into a thesis or an hypothesis; — 
every thesis and hypothesis have an off- 
spring of propositions ; — and each proposi- 
tion has its own consequences and conclu- 
sions ; — every one of which leads the mind 
on again, into fresh tracts of inquiries and 
doubtings. — The force of this engine, added 
my father, is incredible, in opening a child's 

head. 'Tis enough, brother Shandy, 

cried my uncle Toby, to burst it into 8 
thousand splinters. 

I presume, said Yorick, smiling, — it mus-. 
be owing to this, — (for, let logicians say 
what they will, it is not to be accounted foi 
sufficiently from the bare use of the ten 
predicaments), — that the famous Vincent 
Quirino, amongst the many other astonish- 
ing feats of his childhood, of which the 
Cardinal Bembo has given the world so 
exact a story — should be able to paste up 
in the public schools at Rome, so early as 
in the eighth year of his age, no less than 
four thousand five hundred and sixty differ- 
ent theses, upon the most abstruse points 
of the most abstruse theology; — and to de- 
fend and maintain them in such sort, as to 
cramp and dumbfound his opponents. — 
What is that, cried my father, to what is 
told us of Alphonsus Tostatus, who, almost 
in his nurse's arms, learned all the sciences 
and liberal arts, without being taught any 
one of them 1 — What shall we say of the 
great Peireskius ?— That's the very man, 
cried my uncle Toby, I once told you of, 
brother Shandy, who walked a matter of 
five hundred miles, reckoning from Paris 
to Scheveiing, and from Scheveling back 



OF TRISTRAM SIL NDY. 



173 



again, merely to see Stevinus's flying- char- 
iot. — He was a. very great man ! added my 
uncle Toby, (meaning Stevinus). — He was 
so, brother Toby, said my father, (meaning 
Peireskius) — and had multiplied his ideas 
so fast, and increased his knowledge to such 
a prodigious stock, that, if we may give 
credit to an anecdote concerning him, which 
we cannot withhold here, without shaking 
the authority of all anecdotes whatever, — 
at seven years of age, his father committed 
entirely to his care the education of his 
younger brother, a boy of five years old, — 
with the sole management of all his con- 
cerns. — Was the father as wise as the son 1 
quoth my uncle Toby. — I should think not, 
said Yorick. — But what are these, con- 
tinued my father — (breaking out in a kind 
of enthusiasm) — what are these to those 
prodigies of childhood in Grotius, Scioppius, 
Heinsius, Politian, Pascal, Joseph Scaliger, 
Ferdinand de Cordoue, and others, — some 
of whom left off their substantial forms at 
nine years old, or sooner, and went on reason- 
ing without them? — Others went through 
their classes at seven; — wrcte tragedies at 
eight. — Ferdinand de Cordoue was so wise 
at nine, 'twas thought the devil was in him ; 
— and at Venice gave such proofs of his 
knowledge and goodness, that the monks 
imagined he was Antichrist, or nothing. — 
Others were masters of fourteen languages 
at ten ; — finished the course of their rhetoric, 
poetry, logic, and ethics, at eleven; — put 
forth their commentaries upon Servius and 
Martianus Capella at twelve ; — and at thir- 
teen received their degrees in philosophy, 
.aws, and divinity. — But you forget the great 
Lipsius, quoth Yorick, who composed a 
work* the day he was born. — They should 
have wiped it up, said my uncle Toby, and 
aaid no more about it. 



* Nou? aurions quelque interet, says Baillet, de 
montrer qu'il n*a rien de ridicule s'il etoit veritable, 
au mains dans le sens enigmatique que Nicius Eryth- 
•■seus a triche de lui donner. Cet autcur dit. que pour 
eompren.lre comme Lipse, il a pu composer un ouvrage 
<e premier jour de sa vie il faut s'imaginer, que ce 
premier join n'est pas celui de la naissance charnelle, 
mais celui au quel il a commence d'user de la raison: 
il veut q'le c'ait-ete a l'age de neuf ans; et il nous 
veut persuader que ce fut en cet age, que Lipse fit un 
pociue Le tour est ingenieux, &c. &c. 



CHAP. III. 

When the cataplasm was ready, a scru 
pie of decorum had unseasonably rose un 
in Susannah's conscience about holding the 
candle, whilst Slop tied it on ; .slop had not 
treated Susannah's distemper with ano- 
dynes, — and so a quarrel had ensued be- 
twixt them. 

Oh ! oh ! — said Slop, casting a glance of 
undue freedom in Susannah's face, as she 
declined the office ; — then, I think, I know 
you, Madam. — You know me, Sir, cried 
Susannah, fastidiously, and with a toss of 
her head, levelled evidently, not at his pro- 
fession, but at the doctor himself, — you 
know me ! cried Susannah again. — Dr. Slop 
clapped his finger and his thumb instantly 
upon his nostrils ; — Susannah's spleen was 
ready to burst at it ; — 'Tis false, said Su- 
sannah. — Come, come, Mrs. Modesty, said 
Slop, not a little elated with the success of 
his last thrust, — if you won't hold the can- 
dle and look — you may hold it and shut 
your eyes. — That's one of your popish shifts, 
cried Susannah. — 'Tis better, said Slop, 
with a nod, than no shift at all, young wo- 
man. — I defy you, Sir, cried Susannah, 
pulling her shift-sleeve below her elbow. 

It was almost impossible for two persons 
to assist each other, in a surgical case, wita 
a more splenetic cordiality. 

Slop snatched up the cataplasm : — Su- 
sannah snatched up the candle. — A little 
this way, said Slop. — Susannah looking one 
way, and rowing another, instantly set fire 
to Slop's wig, which being somewhat bushy 
and unctuous withal, was burnt out before 
it was well kindled. — You impudent whore ! 
cried Slop, — (for what is passion but a wild 
beast) — you impudent whore ! cried Slop* 
getting upright, with the cataplasm in his 
hand. — I never was the destruction of any 
body's nose, said Susannah — which is more 

than you can say. Is it? — cried Slop, 

throwing the cataplasm in her face. — Yes, 
it is, cried Susannah, returning the complt 
ment with wnat was left in the pan 



CHAP. IV. 

Doctor Slop and Susannah filfd cross 
bills against each other in the parlor; wmc* 



15* 



l?4 LIFE AND OPINIONS 

done, as the cataplasm had failed, they re- 
tired into the kitchen, to prepare a fomen- 
tation for me ; — and whilst that was doing, 
my father determined the point, as you will 
read. 



CHAP. V. 



You see 'tis high time, said my father, 
addressing himself equally to my uncle 
Toby and Yorick, to take this young crea- 
ture out of these women's hands, and put 
him into those of a private governor. Mar- 
cus Antoi -*ms provided fourteen governors 
all at onct to superintend his son Commo- 
dus's edu(ation; — and in six weeks cash- 
iered five of them. — I know very well, 
continued my father, that Commodus's 
mother was in love with a gladiator at the 
time of her conception; which accounts for 
a great many of Commodus's cruelties 
when he became emperor; — but still I am 
of opinion, that those five whom Antoninus 
dismissed, did Commodus's temper, in that 
short time, more hurt than the other nine 
were able to rectify all their lives long. 

Now, as I consider the person who is to 
be about my son, as the mirror in which he 
is to view himself from morning to night, 
and by which he is to adjust his looks, his 
carriage, and, perhaps, the inmost senti- 
ments of his heart, — I would have one, 
Yorick, if possible, polished at all points, 
fit for my child to look into. — This is very 
good sense, quoth my uncle Toby to himself. 

— There is, continued my father, a cer- 
tain mien and motion of the body and all 
its parts, both in acting and speaking, 
which argues a man well within ; — and I 
am not at all surprised, that Gregory of 
Nazianzum, upon observing the hasty and 
untoward gestures of Julian, should foretell 
he would one day become an apostate ; — or 
that St. Ambrose should turn his amanuensis 
out of doors, because of an indecent motion 
of his head, which went backwards and 
forwards like a fidil ; — or that Democritus 
should conceive Protagoras to be a scholar 
from seeing him bind up a fagot, and 
Ihrusting, as he did it, the small twigs in- 
•varas. — There avc a thousand unnoticed 
openings, »,ontinued mv father, which let a 



penetrating eye at once into a man's soul ; 
and I maintain it, fldded he, that a man of 
sense does not lay down his hat in coming 
into a room, — or take it up in going out 
of it, but something escapes which disco- 
vers him. 

It is for these reasons, continued my 
father, that the governor I make choice ol, 
shall neither lisp,* nor squint, nor wink, 
nor talk loud, nor look fierce, nor foolish ; 
— nor bite his lips, nor grind his teeth, nor 
speak through his nose, nor pick it, nor blow 
it with his fingers. 

He shall neither walk fast, nor slow, nor 
fold his arms, — for that is laziness; nor 
hang them down, — for that is folly; nor 
hide them in his pocket, — for that is non- 
sense. 

He shall neither strike, nor pinch, nor 
tickle, — nor bite, nor cut his nails, nor 
hawk, nor spit, nor snift, nor drum with his 
feet or fingers in company ; — nor (according 
to Erasmus) shall he speak to any one, in 
making water, — nor shall he point to car- 
rion or excrement. — Now this is all non- 
sense again, quoth my uncle Toby to him- 
self. 

I will have him, continued my father, 
cheerful, facete, jovial ; at the same time 
prudent, attentive to business, vigilant, 
acute, argute, inventive, quick in resolving 
doubts and speculative questions ; — he shall 
be wise, and judicious, and learned. — And 
why not humble, and moderate, and gentle- 
tempered, and good? said Yorick. — And 
why not, cried my uncle Toby, free, and 
generous, and bountiful, and brave 1 ] — He 
shall, my dear Toby, replied my father, 
getting up and shaking him by his hand. — 
Then, brother Shandy, answered my uncle 
Toby, raising himself off the chair, and 
laying down his pipe to take hold of my 
father's other hand, — I humbly beg I may 
recommend poor Le Fevre's son to you — 
(a tear of joy of the first water sparkled in 
my uncle Toby's eye, — and another, the 
fellow to it, in the Corporal's, as the propo- 
sition was made) — you will see why, when 
you read Le Fevre's story. Fool that I 
was ! nor can I recollect, (nor perhaps you') 
without turning back to the place, what it 
was that hindered me from letting: he Cor- 



Vide Pelleimna. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



175 



poral tell it in his own words; — but the 
occasion is lost, — I must tell it now in my 
own. 



CHAP. VI. 



THE STORY OF LE FEVRE. 

It was some time in the summer of that 
year in which Dendermond was taken by 
the allies, — which was about seven years 
before my father came into the country, — 
and about as many after the time that my 
uncle Toby and Trim had privately de- 
camped from my father's house in town, in 
order to lay some of the finest sieges to 
some of the finest fortified cities in Europe ; 
— when my uncle Toby was one evening 
getting his supper, with Trim sitting behind 
htm at a small sideboard, — I say, sitting, — 
for in consideration of the Corporal's lame 
knee (which sometimes gave him exquisite 
Dain) — when my uncle Toby dined or supped 
alone, he would never suffer the Corporal 
to stand ; and the poor fellow's veneration 
for his master was such, that, with a proper 
artillery, my uncle Toby could have taken 
Dendermond itself with less trouble than 
he was able to gain his point over him ; for 
many a time, when my uncle Toby sup- 
posed the Corporal's leg was at rest, he 
would look back, and detect him standing 
behind him with the most dutiful respect. 
— This bred more little squabbles betwixt 
them, than all other causes, for five and 
twenty years together. — But this is neither 
here nor there — why do I mentign if! — 
Ask my pen ; — it governs me, — I govern 
not it. 

He was one evening sitting thus at his 
supper, when the landlord of a little inn in 
the village, camp into the parlor with an 
empty phial in his hand, to beg a glass or 
t wo of sack. — 'Tis for a poor gentleman, I 
think, of the army, said the landlord, who 
has been taken ill at my house four days 
ago, and has never held up his head since, 
or had a desire to taste any thing, till just 
now, that lie has a fancy for a glass of sack, 
and a thin toast. — I think, says he, taking 
his hand from his head, it would comfort me. 

If I coula neither beg borrow, or buy 



such a thing, added the landlord, I would 
almost steal it for the poor gentleman, he 
is so ill. I hope in God he will still mend 
continued he; we are all of us concerno-. 
for him. 

— Thou art a good-natured soul, I will 
answer for thee, cried my uncle Toby ; and 
thou shalt drink the poor gentleman's health 
in a glass of sack thyself, — and take a cou- 
ple of bottles, with my service, and tell 
him he is heartily welcome to them, and to 
a dozen more, if they will do him good. 

Though I am persuaded, said my uncle 
Toby, as the landlord shut the door, he is a 
very compassionate fellow, Trim, yet I can- 
not help entertaining a high opinion of his 
guest too. There must be something more 
than common in him, that, in so short a 
time, should win so much upon the affec- 
tions of his host: — And of his whole family, 
added the Corporal, for they are all con- 
cerned for him. — Step after him, said my 
uncle Toby, do, Trim ; and ask if he knows 
his name. 

— I have quite forgot it truly, said the 
landlord, coming back into the parlor with 
the Corporal ; — but I can ask his son again. 
— Has he a son with him, then 1 said my 
uncle Toby. — A boy, replied the landlord, 
of about eleven or twelve years of age ; — 
but the poor creature has tasted almost as 
little as his father: he does nothing but 
mourn and lament for him night and day. 
He has not stirred from the bed-side these 
two days. 

My uncle Toby laid down his knife and 
fork, and thrust his plate from before hirn, 
as the landlord gave him the account ; and 
Trim, without being ordered, took it away 
without saying one word, and, in a few 
minutes after, brought him his pipe and to- 
bacco. 

— Stay in the room a little, said my un- 
cle Toby. 

Trim ! said my uncle Toby, after he 
lighted his pipe, and smoked about a dozen 
whiffs. — Trim came in front of his master, 
and made his bow ; — my uncle Toby smok- 
ed on, and said no more. — Corporal ! said 
my uncle Toby, — the Corporal made his 
bow. — My uncle Toby proceeded no farther, 
but finished his pipe. 

Trim ! said my uncle Toby, I have a 
project in my head, as ; t is a bad nignt. of 



I7t 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



wrapping myself up warm in my roquelaure, 
and paying a visit to this poor gentleman. 
— Your Honor's roquelaure, replied the 
Corporal, has not once been had on, since 
the night before your Honor received your 
wound, when we mounted guard in the 
trenches before the gate of St. Nicholas ; 
and, besides, it is so cold and rainy a night, 
that what with the roquelaure, and what 
with the weather, 'twill be enough to give 
your Honor your death, and bring on your 
Honor's torment in your groin. — I fear so, 
replied my uncle Toby ; but I am not at 
rest in my mind, Trim, since the account 
the landlord has given me. — I wish I had 
not known so much of this affair, added my 
uncle Toby, or that I had known more of 
it. — How shall we manage it] Leave it, 
an' please your Honor, to me, quoth the 
Corporal. I'll take my hat and stick, and 
go to the house and reconnoitre, and act 
accordingly; and I will bring your Honor 
a full account in an hour. — Thou shalt go, 
Trim, said my uncle Toby, and here's a shil- 
ling for thee to drink with his servant. — I 
shall get it all out of him, said the Corpo- 
ral, shutting the door. 

My uncle Toby filled his second pipe; 
and had it not been that he now and then 
wandered from the point, with considering 
whether it was not full as well to have the 
curtain of the tenaille a straight line, as a 
crooked one, — he might be said to have 
thought of nothing else but poor Le Feyre 
and his boy the whole time he smoked it. 



CHAP. VII. 

THE STORY OF LE FEVRE CONTINUED. 

— It was not till my uncle Toby had 
knocked the ashes out of his third pipe, that 
Corporal Trim returned from the inn, and 
gave him the following account: — 

— I despaired at first, said the Corporal, 
of being able to bring back your Honor any 
kind of intelligence concerning the poor 
mck lieutenant. — Is he in the army then 1 
said my uncle Toby. — He is, said the Cor- 
uoral. — And in what regiment] said my 
uncle Toby. — I'll tell your Honor, replied 
*iie Corporal, every thing straight-forwards, 



as I learnt it. — Then, Trim, I'll fill anotner 
pipe, said my uncle Toby, and not interrupt 
thee, till thou hast done ; so sit down at 
thy ease, Trim, in the window-seat, and 
begin thy story again. — The Corporal made 
his old bow, which generally spoke as plain 
as a bow could speak it — Your Honor is 
good : — And having done that, he sat down, 
as he was ordered, and began the story to 
my uncle Toby over again, in pretty near 
the same words. 

I despaired at first, said the Corporal, of 
being able to bring back any intelligence 
to your Honor, about the lieutenant and his 
son : — for, when I asked where his servant 
was, from whom I made myself sure of 
knowing every thing which was proper to 
be asked, — (That's a right distinction, Trim, 
said my uncle Toby) — I was answered, an' 
please your Honor, that he had no servant 
with him; — that he had come to the inn 
with hired horses, which, upon finding him- 
self unable to proceed, (to join, I suppose, 
the regiment) he had dismissed the morn- 
ing after he came. — If I get better, my 
dear, said he, as he gave his purse to his 
son to pay the man, — we can hire horses 
from hence. — But alas ! the poor gentle- 
man will never go from hence, said the 
landlady to me, — for I heard the death- 
watch all night long ; — and, when he dies, 
the youth, his son, will certainly die with 
him ; for he is broken-hearted already. 

I was hearing this account, continued 
the Corporal, when the youth came into 
the kitchen, to order the thin toast the 
landlord spoke of: — but I will do it for my 
father, myself, said the youth. — Pray let 
me save # you the trouble, young gentleman, 
said I, taking up a fork for the purpose, and 
offering him my chair to sit down upon by 
the fire, whilst I did it. — I believe, Sir, 
said he, very modestly, I can please him 
best myself. — I am sure, said I, his Honor 
will not like the toast the worse for being 
toasted by an old soldier. — The youth took 
hold of my hand, and instantly burst into 
tears. — Poor youth ! said my uncle Toby ; 
— he has been bred up from an infant in 
the army ; and the name of a soldier, Trim, 
sounded in his ears like the name of a 
friend ! — I wish I had him here. 

— I never, in the longest march, said the 
Corporal, had so great a mind for my din- 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



177 



ner, as T lied to cry with him for company : Isaid I, for months tog-ether, m long and 

— What could be the matter with me, an 

please your Honor 1 — Nothing in the world, 

Trim, said my uncle Tohy, blowing his 

nose, — but that thou art a good-natured 

fellow. 

--When I gave him the toast, continued 
the Corporal, I thought it was proper to 
tell him, I was Captain Shandy's servant, 
and that your Honor (though a stranger) 
was extremely concerned for his father; — 
and that if there was any thing in your 
house or cellar — (And thou might'st have 
added my purse too, said my uncle Toby) — 

he was heartily welcome to it. He made 

a very low bow (which was meant to your 
Honor) but no answer ; — for his heart was 
full : — so he went up stairs with the toast. 
— I warrant you, my dear, said I, as I open- 
ed the kitchen-door, your father will be 

well again. Mr. Yorick's curate was 

smoking a pipe by the kitchen-fire, — but 
said not a word, good or bad, to comfort the 
youth. — I thought it wrong, added the Cor- 
poral. 1 think so too, said my uncle 

Toby. 

When the lieutenant had taken his glass 
of sack and toast, he felt himself a little 
revived, and sent down into the kitchen, to 
let me know, that in about ten minutes, he 
should be glad if I would step up stairs. 

1 believe, said the landlord, he is going 

to say his prayers, — for there was a book 
laid upon the chair by his bed-side, and as 
I shut the door, I saw his son take up a 
cushion. 

— I thought, said the curate, that you 
gentlemen of the army, Mr. Trim, never 
said your prayers at all. — I heard the poor 
gentleman say his prayers last night, said 
the landlady, very devoutly, and with my 
own ears, or I could not have believed it. 

Are you sure of it? replied the curate. 

— A soldier, an' please your Reverence, 
said I, prays as often (of his own accord) as 
a parson ; and when he is fighting for his 
king, and for his own life, and for his honor 
too, he has the most reason to pray to God 
of any one in the whole world. — 'Twas 
well said of thee, Trim, said my uncle 

Toby. But when a soldier, said I, an' 

please your Reverence, has been standing 
for twelve hours together in the trenches, 
ip Lo his knees ixi cold water, — or engaged, 



dangerous marches; — harassed, perhaps, 
in his rear to-day ; — harassing others to 
morrow ; — detached here ; — countermandeu 
there; — resting this night out upon his 
arms ; — beat up in his shirt the next ; — be- 
numbed in his joints; perhaps without 
straw in his tent to kneel on ; — must say 

his prayers how and when he can. 1 

believe, said I, for I was piqued, quoth the 
Corporal, for the reputation of the army, — 
I believe, an' please your Reverence, said 
I, that when a soldier gets time to pray, — 
he prays as heartily as a parson — though 
not with all his fuss and hypocrisy. — Thou 
shouldst not have said that, Trim, said my 
uncle Toby, — for God only knows who is a 
hypocrite, and who is not: — At the great 
and general review of us all, Corporal, at 
the day of judgment, (and not till then) — 
it will be seen who have done their duties 
in this world, — and who have not; and we 
shall be advanced, Trim, accordingly. — I 

hope we shall, said Trim. It is in (he 

scripture, said my uncle Toby ; and I will 
show it thee to-morrow. — In the mean time 
we may depend upon it, Trim, for our 
comfort, said my uncle Toby, that God 
Almighty is so good and just a governor of 
the world, that if we have but done our 
duties in it, — it will never be inquired into, 
whether we have done them in a red coat 
or a black one. — I hope not, said the Cor- 
poral. — But go on, Trim, said my uncle 
Toby, with thy story. — 

When I went up, continued the Corporal, 
into the lieutenant's room, which 1 did not 
do till the expiration of the ten minutes, — 
he was lying in his bed, with his head 
raised upon his hand, with his elbow upon 
the pillow, and a clean white cambric hand- 
kerchief beside it. — The youth was just 
stooping down to take up the cushion, upcn 
which, I supposed, he had been kneeling; 
— the book was laid upon the bed ; — and as 
he rose, in taking up the cushion with one 
hand, he reached out his other to take it 
away at the same time. — Let it reman! 
there, my dear, said the lieutenant. — 

He did not offer to speak to me, till I i»jd 
walked up close to to his bed-side. — If yoi< 
are Captain Shandy's servant. Baid he, yen 
must present my thanks to your lnrster. 
with my little boy's thanks along WJtU 



178 



LiFE AND OPINIONS 



them, for his ccurtesy to me.- -If he was 
of Levens's, — said the lieutenant — I told 
him your Honor was. — Then, said he, I 
served three campaigns with him in Flan- 
ders, and remember him, — but 'tis most 
Jkely, as I had not the honor of any ac- 
quaintance with him, that he knows nothing 
of me. — You will tell him, however, that 
the person his good-nature has laid under 
obligations to him, is one Le Fevre, a lieu- 
tenant in Angus's ; — but he knows me not, 
— said he, a second time, musing ; — possi- 
bly he may my story, added he. — Pray tell 
the captain, I was the ensign at Breda, 



CHAP. VIII. 

THE STORY OF LE FEVRE CONTINUED. 

It was to my uncle Toby's eternal honor 
— though I tell it only for the sake of those 
who, when coop'd in betwixt a natural and 
a positive law, know not, for their souls, 
which way in the world to turn themselves, 
— That notwithstanding my uncle Toby 
was warmly engaged at that time in carry- 
ing on the siege of Dendermond, parallel 
with the allies, who pressed theirs so vigor 
ously, that they scarce allowed him time 



whose wife was most unfortunately killed to get his dinner : — that nevertheless he 

gave up Dendermond, though he had al- 
ready made a lodgment upon the counter- 
scarp ; — and bent his whole thoughts to- 
wards the private distresses at the inn ; and, 



with a musket-shot, as she lay in my arms 

in my tent. 1 remember the story, an' 

please your Honor, said I, very well. — Do 
you so I — said he, wiping his eyes with his 



handkerchief, — then well may I. In except that he ordered the garden-gate to 

saying this, he drew a little ring out of his I be bolted up, by which he might be said to 
bosom, which seemed tied with a black have turned the siege of Dendermond into 
ribbon about his neck, and kissed it twice, la blockade, — he left Dendermond to itself, 

Here, Billy, said he ; — the boy flew — to be relieved or not by the French king, 

across the room to the bed-side, — and fall- as the French king thought good ; and only 
ing down upon his knee, took the ring in considered how he himself should relieve 
his hand, and kissed it too, — then kissed his the poor lieutenant and his son. 
father, and sat down upon the bed and 
wept. 



the friendless, shall recompense thee for 



I wish, said my uncle Toby, with a deep this. 



sigh, — I wish, Trim, I was asleep. — 



Thou hast left this matter short, said my 



Your Honor, replied the Corporal, is too uncle Toby to the Corporal, as he was 



much concerned. — Shall I pour out your 
Honor a glass of sack, to your pipe ! 
Trim, said my uncle Toby. 



; putting him to bed, and I will tell thee in 

Do, what, Trim. — In the first place, when thou 

mad'st an offer of my services to Le Fevre, 



I remember, said my uncle Toby, sighing — as sickness and travelling are both ex- 
again, the story of the ensign and his wife, pensive, and thou knew'st he was but a poor 
with a circumstance his modesty omitted; i lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as 
— and particularly well that he, as well as himself, out of his pay, — that thou didst 
she, upon some account or other, (I forget ' not make an offer to him of my purse ; be- 



what) was universally pitied by the whole 
regiment; — but finish the story thou art 
upon. — 'Tis finished already, said the Cor- 
poral, — for I could stay no longer ; — so wish- 
ed his Honor a good night. Young Le Fevre 
rose from off the bed, and saw me to the 
bottom of the stairs ; and as we went down 
logether, told me, they had come from Ire- 
land, and were on their route to join the 

regiment in Flanders. But alas! said 

»h«=» Corporal, — the lieutenant's last day's 

marcn is over ! Then what is to become 

or am noor bov 7 cried my uncle Toby. 



cause, had he stood in need, thou knowest, 
Trim, he had been as welcome to it as my- 
self. — Your Honor knows, said the Corporal, 
I had no orders. — True, quoth my uncle 
Toby, — thou didst very right, Trim, as a 
soldier, — but certainly very wrong as a 
man. 

In the second place, for which, indeed, 
thou hast the same excuse, continued my 
uncle Toby, — when thou offeredst him what- 
ever was in my house, thou shouldst hav* 
offered him my house too. — A sick brothe 
officer should have tne best quarters, Trim 




THE STORY OF LEFEVRE. 
"And the Corporal shall be your nurse; and I'll be your servant, Lefevre." — p. 17'.). 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



179 



and if we had him with us, — we could tend 

and look to him. Thou art an excellent 

nurse thyself, Trim, and what with thy care 
of him, and the old woman's, and his boy's, 
and mine together, we might recruit him 
again at once, and set him upon his legs. 

— In a fortnight or three weeks, added 
my uncle Toby, smiling, — he might march. 
— He will never march, an' please your 
Honor, in this world, said the Corporal. He 
will march, said my uncle Toby, rising up 
from the side of the bed with one shoe off. 
—An' please your Honor, said the Cor- 
poral, he will never march, but to his grave. 

He shall march, cried my uncle Toby, 

marching the foot which had a shoe on, 
though without advancing an inch, — he shall 
march to his regiment. — He cannot stand 
it, said the Corporal. — He shall be support- 
ed, said rny uncle Toby. — He'll drop at last, 
said the Corporal, and what will become of 
his boy 1 — He shall not drop, said my uncle 
Toby, firmly. — A-well-a-day ! do what we 
can for him, said Trim, maintaining his 
point, — the poor soul will die. — He shall 
not die, by G — , cried my uncle Toby. 

The accusing spirit which flew up 

to Heaven's chancery with the oath, blush'd 
as he gave it in ; and the recording angel, 
as he wrote it down, dropp'd a tear upon 
he word, and blotted it out for ever. 



CHAP. IX. 



My uncle Toby went to his bureau, — 
put his purse into his breeches-pocket, and 
having ordered the Corporal to go early in 
the morning for a physician, — he wert to 
bed, and fell asleep. 



CHAP. X. 

THE STORY OF LE FEVRE CONCLUDED. 

The sun looked bright the morning after, 
to every eye in the village but Le Fevre's 
and his afflicted son's ; the hand of death 
press'd heavy upon his eye-lids; — and hardly 
ccild the wheel at the cistern turn round 
ts circle, — when mv uncle Toby, who had 



rose up an hour before his wonted time 
entered the lieutenant's room, and wiLhou 
preface or apology, sat himself down upon 
the chair by the bed-side, and, independent ly 
of all modes and customs, opened the curtain 
in the manner an old friend and brother* 
officer would have done it, and asked him 
how he did, — how he had rested in the 
night, — what was his complaint, — where 
was his pain, — and what he could do to help 
him; — and without giving him time tc 
answer any one of the inquiries, went on 
and told him of the little plan which he had 
been concerting with the Corporal the night 
before for him. 

— You shall go home directly, Le Fevre, 
said my uncle Toby, to my house, and we'll 
send for a doctor to see what's the matter, 
— and we'll have an apothecary, — and the 
Corporal shall be your nurse ; — and I'll be 
your servant, Le Fevre. — 

There was a frankness in my uncle Toby, 
— not the effect of familiarity, — but the 
cause of it, — which let you at once into his 
soul, and showed you the goodness of his 
nature. To this, there was something in his 
looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, 
which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate 
to come and take shelter under him ; so that 
before my uncle Toby had half finished the 
kind offers he was making to the father, had 
the son insensibly pressed up close to his 
knees, and had taken hold of the breast of 
his coat, and was pulling it towards him. 

— The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, 
which were waxing cold and slow vMhin 
him, and were retreating to their last citadel, 
the heart — rallied back, — the film forsook 
his eyes for a moment ; — he looked up wish- 
fully in my uncle Toby's face ; — then cast 
a look upon his boy ; — and that ligament, 
fine as it was, was never broken. — 

Nature instantly ebb'd again ; — the film 
returned to its place ; — the pulse fluttered, 

stopp'd, — went on, — throbb'd, — stopp'd 
again, — mov'd, — stopp'd, — shall I goon? 

-No. 



CHAP. XL 

I am so impatient to return to my own 
story, that what remains of young Le 



180 

Fevre's, tnat is, from this turn of his for- 
tune, to the time my uncle Toby recom- 
mended him for my preceptor, shall be told 
in a very few words, in the next chapter. 
—All that is necessary to be added to this 
chapter is as follows: — 

That my uncle Toby, with young Le 
Fevre in his hand, attended the poor lieu- 
tenant, as chief mourners, to his grave. 

That the governor of Dendermond paid 
his obsequies all military honors ; and that 
Yorick, not to be behind-hand, — paid him 
all ecclesiastic, — for he buried him in his 
chancel. — And it appears likewise, he 
preached a funeral sermon over him, — I 
say, it appears, — for it was Yorick's custom 
which I suppose a general one with those 
of his profession, on the first leaf of every 
sermon which he composed, to chronicle 
down the time, the place, and the occasion 
of its being preached : to this, he was ever 
wont to add some short comment or stric- 
ture upon the sermon itself, — seldom, in- 
deed, much to its credit. — For instance, 
"This sermon upon the Jewish dispensation 
— I don't like it at all ; though I own there 
is a world of water-landish knowledge in 
it; — but 'tis all tritical, and most trilically 
put together. — This is but a flimsy kind of 
composition. What was in my head when I 
made it] 

" — N. B. The excellency of this text is, 
that it will suit any sermon; — and of this 
sermon, that it will suit any text. 

" — For this sermon I snail be hanged, — 
for I have stolen the greatest part of it. 
Doctor Paidagunes found me out. 

kl O^T Set a thief to catch a thief." 

On the back of half a dozen I find written, 
" So so," and no more : — and upon a couple 
" Moderato ;" by which, as far as one may 
gather from Altieri's Italian Dictionary, — 
but mostly from the authority of a piece of 
green whip-cord, which seemed to have 
been the unravelling of Yorick's whip-lash, 
with which he has left us the two sermons 
marked Moderato, and the half dozen of 
So so's, tied fast together in one bundle 
by themselves, one may safely suppose he 
meant pretty nearly the same thing. 

There is bu* one difficulty in the way of 
tins coniecture, which is this, that the Mod- 
eidtos are five times better than the So 
s«»'s,— show ten times more knowledge of 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

the human heart; — have seventy times 
more wit and spirit in them ; — (and to rise 
properly in my climax) — discover a thou 
sand times more genius ; and, to crown all, 
are infinitely more entertaining, than those 
tied up with them: — for which reason, 
whenever Yorick's dramatic sermons are 
offered to the world, though I shall admit 
but one out of the whole number of the So 
so's, I shall, nevertheless, adventure to print 
the two moderato's without any sort of 
scruple. 

What Yorick could mean by the words 
lentamente, — lenute, — grave, — and some- 
times adagio, — as applied to theological 
compositions, and with which he has char- 
acterized some of these sermons, I dare not 
venture to guess. — I am more puzzled still 
upon finding a Voctavo alta ! upon one : — 
Constrepito upon the back of another; — 
Scicilliana upon a third ; — Alia capella 
upon a fourth ; — Con Varco upon this ; — 
Senza Z'arco.upon that. — All I know is, that 
they are musical terms, and have a mean- 
ing ; — tnd as he was a musical man, I will 
make no doubt, but that by some quaint ap- 
plication of such metaphors to the composi- 
tions in hand, they impressed very distinct 
ideas of their several characters upon hia 
fancy, whatever they may do upon that of 
others. 

Amongst these, there is that particular 
sermon which has unaccountably led me 
into this digression, — The funeral sermon 
upon poor Le Fevre, wrote out very fairly, 
as if from a hasty copy. — I take notice of it 
the more, because it seems to have been his 
favorite composition. — It is upon mortality ; 
and is tied length-ways and cross-wcys 
with a yarn thrum, and then rolled up and 
twisted round with a half sheet of dirty 
blue paper, which seems to have been once 
the cast-cover of a general review, which 
to this day smells horribly of horse drugs. — 
Whether these marks of humiliation were 
designed, — I something doubt ; — because at 
the end of the sermon, (and not at the be- 
ginning of it) — very different from his way 

of treating the rest, he had wrote 

Bravo ! 
— though not very offensively, — for it is a| 
two inches, at least, and a half's distance 
from, and below the concluding line of the 
sermon, at the very extremity -of the Dage, 



and in that right-hand corner of it, which, 
you know, is generally covered with your 
thumb; and, to do it justice, it is wrote 
besides with a crow's quill so faintly in a 
email Italian hand, as scarce to solicit the 
eye towards the place, whether your thumb 
is there or not ; — so that, from the manner 
of it, it stands half excused ; and being 
wrote, moreover, with very pale ink, diluted 
almost to nothing, — 'tis more like the ri- 
tratto of the shadow of vanity, than of van- 
ity herself — of the two; resembling rather 
a faint thought of transient applause, se- 
cretly stirring up in the heart of the com- 
poser, than a gross mark of it, coarsely ob- 
truded upon the world. 

With all these extenuations, I am aware, 
that in publishing this, I do no service to 
Yorick's character as a modest man ; — but 
all men have their failings; and what lessens 
this still farther, and almost wipes it away, 
is this, that the word was struck through 
some time afterwards (as appears from a 
different tint of the ink) with a line quite 
across it in this manner, t rllA " > » — as if he 
had retracted, or was ashamed of the opin- 
ion he had once entertained of it. 

These short characters of his sermons 
were always written, excepting in this one 
instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, 
which served as a cover to it; and usually 
upon the inside of it, which was turned 
toward the text; — but at the end of his 
discourse, where, perhaps, he had five or 
six pages, and sometimes, perhaps, a whole 
score to turn himself in, — he took a larger 
circuit, and indeed a much more mettle- 
some one ; — as if he had snatched the occa- 
sion of unlacing himself with a few more 
frolicsome strokes at vice, than the strait- 
ness of the pulpit allowed. — These, though 
hussar-like they skirmish lightly, and out 
of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side 
of virtue ; — tell me, then, Mynheer Vander 
Blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they 
should not be printed together 1 



CHAP. XII. 



When my uncle Toby had turned every 
thing into money, and settled all accounts be- 
twixt the agent of the regiment and Le Fe- 
vre, and betwixt Le Fevre and all mankind, 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 181 

there remained nothing more in my uncle 
Toby's hands than an old regimental coat, 
and a sword; so that my uncle Toby found 
little or no opposition from the world in 
taking administration. The coat my uncle 
Toby gave the Corporal. — Wear it, Trim 
said my uncle Toby, as long as it will hold 
together, for the sake of the poor lieuten- 
ant. — And this, — said my uncle Toby, 
taking up the sword in his hand, and draw- 
ing it out of the scabbard as he spoke, — and 
this, Le Fevre, I'll save for thee : — 'tis all 
the fortune, continued my uncle Toby, hang- 
ing it upon a crook, and pointing to it, — 'tis 
all the fortune, my dear Le Fevre, which 
God has left thee ; but if he has given thee 
a heart to fight thy way with it in the 
world, — and thou doest it like a man of 
honor, — 'tis enough for us. 

As soon as my uncle Toby had laid a 
foundation and taught him to inscribe a 
regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to 
a public school, where, excepting Whitsun- 
tide and Christmas, at which times the Cor- 
poral was punctually dispatched for him, — ■ 
he remained to the spring of the year seven- 
teen ; when the stories of the Emperors 
sending his army into Hungary, against the 
Turks, kindling a spark of fire in his bosom, 
he left his Greek and Latin without leave, 
and throwing himself upon his knees before 
my uncle Toby, begged his father's sword, 
and my uncle Toby's leave along with it, 
to go and try his fortune under Eugene. — 
Twice did my uncle Toby forget his wound, 
and cry out, Le Fevre ! I will go with thee, 
and thou shalt fight beside me, — and twice 
he laid his hand upon his groin, and hung 
down his head in sorrow and disconsola- 
tion. — 

My uncle Toby took down the sword 
from the crook, where it had hung untouch- 
ed ever since the lieutenant's death, and 
delivered it to the Corporal to brighten up ; 
— and having detained Le Fevre a single 
fortnight to equip him, and contract for his 
passage to Leghorn, — he put the sword into 
his hands. — If thou art brave, Le Fevre. 
said my uncle Toby, this will not fail tliec, 
— but Fortune, said he, (musing a little)— 
Fortune may: — *\nd if she does — added my 
uncle Toby, embracing him, — come bad* 
again to me, Le Fevre, and we will shape 

thee another course. 
16 



182 



The greatest injury could not have op- 
pressed the heart of Le Fevre more than 
my uncle Toby's paternal kindness; — he 
parted from my uncle Toby, as the best of 
sons from the best of fathers — both dropped 
tears — and as my uncle Toby gave him his 
last kiss, he slipped sixty guineas, tied up 
in an old purse of his father's, in which was 
his mother's ring, into his hand, — and bid 
God bless him. 



LIFE AND OPINION 

-The best hearts, Trim, are ever the 
bravest, replied my uncle Toby. — And the 
greatest cowards, an' please your Honor, 
in our regiment, were the greatest rascals 
in it: — there was Serjeant Kumber, and 

Ensign 

We'll talk of them, said my father, an» 
other time. 



CHAP. XIII. 

Le Fevre got up to the Imperial army 
just time enough to try what metal his 
sword was made of, at the defeat of the 
Turks before Belgrade ; but a series of un- 
merited mischances had pursued him from 
that moment, and trod close upon his heels 
for four years together after. He had with- 
stood these buffetings to the last, till sick- 
ness overtook him at Marseilles, from 
whence he wrote my uncle Toby word, he 
had lost his time, his services, his health, 
and, in short, every thing but his sword ; — 
and was waiting for the first ship to return 
back to him. 

As this letter came to hand about six 
weeks before Susannah's accident, Le Fe- 
vre was hourly expected, and was upper- 
most in my uncle Toby's mind all the time 
my father was giving him and Yorick a 
description of what kind of a person he 
would choose for a preceptor to me : but as 
my uncle Toby thought my father at first 
somewhat fanciful in the accomplishments 
he required, he forbore mentioning Le Fe- 
vre's name — till the character, by Yorick's 
interposition, ending, unexpectedly, in one 
who should be gentle-tempered, and gen- 
erous, and good, it impressed the image of 
Le Fevre, and his interest, upon my uncle 
Toby so forcibly, that he rose instantly off 
his chair ; and laying down his pipe, in or- 
der to take hold of both my father's hands 
— I beg, brother Shandy, said my uncle 
Toby, I may recommend poor Le Fevre's 
feon 10 you. — I beseech you do, added Yo- 
rick. — He has a good heart, said my uncle 
Toby. — And a brave one too, an' please 
vow Honor, said the Corporal. 



CHAP. XIV. 

What a jovial and a merry world would 
this be, may it please your Worships, but 
for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, 
cares, woes, want, grief, discontent, mel- 
ancholy, large jointures, impositions, and 
lies! 

Dr. Slop, like a son of a w , as my 

father called him for it, — to exalt himself-— 
debased me to death, and made ten thou- 
sand times more of Susannah's accident 
than there was any grounds for ; so that in 
a week's time, or less, it was in every 
body's mouth, that poor Master Shandy 
******* entirely — and Fame, 
who loves to double every thing, — in three 
days more, had sworn positively she saw it; 
and all the world, as usual, gave credit to 
her evidence — " That the nursery window 
"had not only* ******** 
«* * * ; but that ******* 
t* ******* > s also » 

Could the world have been sued like a 
body-corporate, — my father had brought 
an action upon the case, and trounced it 
sufficiently ; but, to fall foul of individuals 
about it — as every soul who had mentioned 
the affair, did it with the greatest pity 
imaginable — 'twas like flying in the very 
face of his best friends: — and yet, to ac- 
quiesce under the report, in silence — was 
to acknowledge it openly, — at least in the 
opinion of one half of the world ; and to 
make a bustle again, in contradicting it- 
was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion 
of the other half — 

— Was ever poor devil of a country-gen- 
tleman so hampered ? said my father. 

I would show him publicly, said my uncle 
Toby, at the market-c^oss. 

— 'Twill have no effect, said my father 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



183 



CHAP. XV. 

I'll put him, however, into breech- 
es, said my father, let the world say what 
it will. 



CHAP. XVI. 

There are a thousand resolutions, Sir, 
both in church and state, as well as in mat- 
ters, Madam, of a more private concern, — 
which, though they have carried all the 
appearance in the world of being taken and 
entered upon in a hasty, harebrained, and 
unadvised manner, were, notwithstanding 
this, (and could you or I have got into the 
cabinet, or stood behind the curtain, we 
should have found it was so) weighed, 
poised, and perpended — argued upon — can- 
vassed through — entered into, and exam- 
ined on all sides with so much coolness, 
that the goddess of coolness herself (I do 
not take upon me to prove her existence) 
could neither have wished it, or done it 
better. 

Of the number of these was my father's 
resolution of putting me into breeches; 
which though determined at once — in a 
kind of huff, and a defiance of all mankind, 
had, nevertheless, been pro'd and con'd, and 
judicially taiked over betwixt him and my 
mother about a month before, in two several 
beds of justice, which my father had held 
for that purpose. I shall explain the nature 
of these beds of justice in my next chapter; 
and, in the chapter following that, you shall 
step with me, Madam, behind the curtain, 
only to hear in what kind of manner my 
father and my mother debated between 
themselves this affair of the breeches, from 
which you may form an idea how they de- 
bated all lesser matters. 



CHAP. X*VII. 

The ancient Goths of Germany, who (the 
learned Cluverius is positive) were first 
seated in the country between the Vistula 
&nd the Oder, and who afterwards incor- 
porated the Herculi, the Bugians, and some 



other Vandal ic clans to 'em, had all of 
them a wise custom of debating every tiling 
of importance to their state, twice ; tnat is, 
once drunk, and once sober ; drunk — that 
their councils might not want vigor; — and 
sober — that they might not want discretion 
Now my father, being entirely a water- 
drinker, — was a long time gravelled almost 
to death, in turning this as much to his 
advantage, as he did every other thing, 
which the ancients did or said : and it was 
not till the seventh year of his marriage, 
after a thousand fruitless experiments and 
devices, that he hit upon an expedient 
which answered the purpose : — and that 
was, when any difficult and momentous 
point was to be settled in the family, which 
required great sobriety, and great spirit 
too, in its determination, — he fixed and set 
apart the first Sunday night in the month, 
and the Saturday night which immediately 
preceded it, to argue it ov,er in bed with 
my mother: by which contrivance, if you 
consider, Sir, with yourself, ***** 
********* 

These my father, humorously enough, 
called his beds of justice; — for, from the 
two different counsels taken in these two 
different humors, a middle one was gener- 
ally found out, which touched the point of 
wisdom as well as if he had got drunk and 
sober an hundred times. 

It must not be made a secret of to the 
world, that this answers full as well in 
literary discussions, as either in military or 
conjugal ; but it is not every author that 
can try the experiment as the Goths and 
Vandals did it — or, if he can, may it be 
always for his body's health 1 and to do it, 
as my father did it, — am I sure it would be 
always for his soul's 1 

My way is this : 

In all nice and ticklish discussions, — (of 
which, Heaven knows, there are but too 
many in my book) — where I find I cannot 
take a step without the danger of having 
either their Worships or their Re\crence» 
upon my back, — I write one half full, — and 
t'other fasting; — or write it all full and 
correct it fasting; or write it fasting and 
correct it full — for they all come to tne 
same thing. — So that, with a less variation 
from my father's plan, than my father's 
from the Gothic — I feel myself upon a p»r 



.84 LIFE AND OPINIONS 

with I ivn in his first bed of justice, — and no 



way inferior to him in his second. — These 
different and almost irreconcilable effects, 
flow uniformly from the wise and wonder- 
ful mechanism of nature — of which — be 
hers the honor. — All that we can do, is, to 
turn and work the machine to the improve- 
ment and better manufactory of the arts 
and sciences. — 

Now, when I write full, — I write as if I 
was never to write fasting- again as long- as 
I live ; — that is, I write free from the cares, 
as well as the terrors of the world — I count 
not the number of my scars, nor does my 
fancy go forth into dark entries and by- 
corners to antedate my stabs. — In a word, 
my pen takes its course ; and I write on, as 
much from the fullness of my heart as my 
Btomach. — 

But when, an' please your Honors, I in- 
dite fasting, 'tis a different story. — I pay the 
world all possible attention and respect, — 
and have as great a share (whilst it lasts) 
of that understrapping virtue of discretion 
as the best of you. — So that betwixt both, 
I write a careless kind of a civil, nonsen 
6ical, good-humored, Shandean book, which 
will do all your hearts good. 

And all your heads too, — provided 

you understand it 



CHAP. XVIII. 

We should begin, said my father, turn- 
ing himself half round in bed, and shifting 
his pillow a little towards my mother's, as 
he opened the debate — we should begin to 
think, Mrs. Shandy, of putting this boy 
into breeches. — 

We should so, — said my mother. — We 
defer it, my dear, quoth my father, shame- 
fully. 

I think we do, Mr. Shandy, — said my 
mother. 

— Not but the child looks extremely well, 
■aid my father, in his vests and tunics. — 

— He does look very well in them, — re- 
plied my mother. 

— Anu for that reason it would be almost 
a Sin, added my fatner, to take him out of 
em. 

\\ would so, — said my mother. — But, in- 



deed, he is growing a very tall lad, — re- 
joined my father. 

— He is very tall for his age, indeed — 
said my mother. — 

— I can not (making two syllables of it) 
imagine, quoth my father, who the deuce 
he takes after. — 

1 cannot conceive, for my life, — said mj 
mother. — 

Humph ! — said my father. 

(The dialogue ceased for a moment.) 

— I am very short myself, — continued 
my father, gravely. 

You are very short, Mr. Shandy, — said 
my mother. 

Humph! quoth my father to himself, a . 
second time; in muttering which, he plucked 
his pillow a little farther from my mother's 
— and turning about again, there was an " 
end of the debate for three minutes and an 
half. 

— When he gets these breeches made, 
cried my father, in a higher tone, he'll look 
like a beast in 'em. 

Ho will be very awkward in them at 
first, replied my mother. 

— And 'twill be lucky, if that's the worst 
on't, added my father. 

It will be very lucky, answered my mo- 
ther. 

I suppose, replied my father, — making 
some pause first — he'll be exactly like other 
people's children. — 

Exactly, said my mother. — 

— Though I should be sorry for that, 
added my father : and so the debate stopp'd 
again. 

— They should be of leather, said my • 
father, turning him about again. — 

They will last him, said my mother, the 
longest. 

But he can have no linings to 'em, re- 
plied my father. 

He cannot, said my mother. 

'Twere better to have them of fustian, 
quoth my father. 

Nothing can be better, quoth my mo- 
ther. — 

— Except dimity, replied my father. — 
'Tis best of all, — replied my mother. — 

— One must not give him his death, 
however, — interrupted my f; ther. 

By no means, said my mother. — And so 
the dialogue stood still again. 



J am resolved, however, quoth my father, 
breaking silence the fourth time, he shall 
have no pockets in them. 

— There is no occasion for any, — said my 
mother. 

I mean, in his coat, and waistcoat,— rcried 
my fattier. 

— I mean so too, — replied my mother. 

Though if he gets a gig or a top — poor 
sciuls ! it is a crown and a sceptre to them, 
— they should have where to secure it. 

Order it as you please, Mr. Shandy, re- 
plied my mother. 

But don't you think it right? added my 
father, pressing the point home to her. 

Perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases 
you, Mr. Shandy. 

— There's for you ! cried my father, losing 
temper. — Pleases me ! — You never will dis- 
tinguish, Mrs. Shandy, nor shall I ever 
teach you to do it, betwixt a point of pleas- 
ure and a point of convenience. — This was 
on the Sunday night; — and farther this 
chapter sayeth not. 



CHAP. XIX. 

After my father had debated the affair 
of the breeches with my mother, — he con- 
sulted Albertus Rubenius upon it; and Al- 
bertus Rubenius used my father ten times 
worse in the consultation (if possible) than 
even my father had used my mother ; for as 
Rubenius had wrote a quarto express, Dc 
re Vestiaria Veterum, — it was Rubenius' 
business to have given my father some 
lights. — On the contrary, my father might 
as well have thought of extracting the sev- 
en cardinal virtues out of a long beard, as 
of extracting a single word out of Rubenius 
upon the subject. 

Upon every other article of ancient dress, 
Rubenius was very communicative to my 
father; he gave him a full and satisfactory 
account of 

The Toga, or loose gown. 

The Chlamys. 

The Ephod. 

The Tunica, or Jacket. 

The Synthesis. 

The Psenula. 

The Lacerna, with its Cucullus. 
Y 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

The Pal ud amentum. 



1W 



The Prajtexta. 

The Sagum, or soldier's jerkin. 

The Trabea; of which, according tt 

Suetonius, there were three kinds 

— But what are all these to the breeches? 
said my father. 

Rubenius threw him down upon the 
counter all kinds of shoes which had been 
in fashion with the Romans. — There was, 
The open shoe. 
The close shoe. 
The slip shoe. 
The wooden shoe. 
The sock. 
The buskin. 
And The military shoe with hob 
nails in it, which Juvenal takes 
notice of. 
There were, The clogs. 
The pattens. 
The pantoufles. 
The brogues. 

The sandals, with latch 3s to 
them. 
There was, The felt shoe. 
The linen shoe. 
The braided shoe. 
The laced shoe. 
The calceus insisus. 
And The calceus rostratus. 
Rubenius showed my father how well they 
all fitted, — in what manner they laced on, 
— with what points, straps, thongs, Latchets, 
ribbons, jaggs, and ends. 

— But 1 want to be informed about the 
breeches, said my father. — 

Albertus Rubenius informed my father 
that the Romans manufactured stuffs of va- 
rious fabrics : — some plain, — some striped, 
others diapered throughout the whole 
contexture of the wool, with silk and gold. 
— That linen did not begin to be in com- 
mon use till towards the declension of the 
empire, when the Egyptians, coming to set 
tie amongst them, brought it into vogue. 

— That persons of quality and fortune 
distinguished themselves by the fineness 
and whiteness of their clothes: whicn color 
(next to purple, which was appropriated to 
the great officers) they most affected aim 
wore on their birth-days anu public rejoi»> 
ings : — That it appeared from the best his- 
torians of those times, that they frequently 
lb* 



186 LIFE AND 

sent their clothes to the fuller, to be clean'd 
and whitened : — but that the inferior peo- 
ple, to avoid that expense, generally wore 
nrown clothes, and of a something coarser 
texture — till towards the beginning of Au- 
gustus's reign, when the slave dressed like 
his master, and almost every distinction of 
habiliment was lost, but the Latus Clavus. 

And what was the Latus Clavus ? said 
my father. 

Rubenius told him, that the point was 
still litigating amongst the learned ; — that 
Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius, Ticinensis, 
Baysius, Budseus, Salmasius, Lipsius, Lizi- 
us, Isaac Causabon, and Joseph Scaliger, all 
differed from each other, — and he from 
them : — That some took it to be the button ; 
— some the coat itself; — others only the 
color of it : — That the great Baysius, in his 
Wardrobe of the Ancients, chap. 12, — hon- 
estly said, he knew not what it was, — 
whether a tribula, — a stud, — a button, — a 
loop, — a buckle, — or clasps and keepers. — 

My father lost the horse, but not the sad- 
dle. — They are hooks and eyes, said my 
father — and with hooks and eyes he ordered 
my breeches to be made. 



CHAP. XX. 

We are now going to enter upon a new 
scene of events. 

Leave we then the breeches in the taylor's 
hands, with my father standing over him 
with his cane, reading him as he sat at work 
a lecture upon the latus clavus, and pointing 
to the precise part of the waistband where 
he was determined to have it sewed on. 

Leave we my mother — (truest of all the 
Pococurantes of her sex !) — careless about 
it, as about every thing else in the world 
which concerned her ; — that is, — indifferent 
whether it was done this way or that, — 
providing it was but done at all. 

Leave we Slop likewise to the full profits 
of all my dishonors. 

Leave we poor Le Fevre to recover, and 
get home from Marseilles as he can : — and 
last of all, — because the hardest of all, — 

Let us leave, if possible, myself: — but 
bs impossible, — I must go along with you 
* the end of the work. 



OPINIONS 

CHAP. XXI. 

If the reader has not a clear conception 
of the rood and a half of ground which iay 
at the bottom of my uncle Toby s kitchen- 
garden, and which was the scene of so many 
of his delicious hours, — the fault is not in 
me, but in his imagination ; for I am sure 
I gave him so minute a description, I was 
almost ashamed of it. 

When Fate was looking forwards one af- 
ternoon, into the great transactions of future 
times, — and recollected for what purposes 
this little plot, by a decree fast bound down 
in iron, had been destined, — she gave a 
nod to Nature : — 'twas enough — Nature 
threw half a spadefullof her kindliest com- 
post upon it, with just so much clay in it, as 
to retain the forms of angles and indentings, 
— and so little of it too, as not to cling to 
the spade, and render works of so much 
glory, nasty in foul weather. 

My uncle Toby came down, as the reader 
has been informed, with plans along with 
him, of almost every fortified town in Italy 
and Flanders ; so, let the Duke of Marlbo- 
rough, or the allies, have set down before 
what town they pleased, my uncle Toby 
was prepared for them. 

His way, which was the simplest one in 
the world, was this: — As soon as ever a 
town was invested, (but sooner when the 
design was known) to take the plan of it 
(let it be what town it would) and enlarge 
it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowl- 
ing-green ; upon the surface of which, by 
means of a large roll of pack-thread, and a 
number of small piquets driven into the 
ground, at the several angles, and redans, 
he transferred the lines from his paper; then 
taking the profile of the place, with its 
works, to determine the depths and slopes 
of the ditches, — the talus of the glacis, and 
the precise height of the several banquettes, 
parapets, &c. — he set the Corporal to work; 
and sweetly went it on. — The nature of the 
soil, — the nature of the work itself, — and, 
above all, the good-nature of my uncle 
Toby, sitting by from morning to night, and 
chatting kindly with the Corporal upon past- 
done deeds — left labor little else but the 
ceremony of the name. 

When the place was finished in this 
manner, and put into a pro; ?r rosture of 
defence, — it was invested; — and my unfit 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 



187 



Toby and the Corpora! began to run their 
first parallel. — I beg I may not be inter- 
rupted in my story, by being told, That the 
first parallel should be at least three hun- 
dred toises distant from the main body of 
the place, — and that I have not left a single 
inch for it ; — for my uncle Toby took the 
liberty of encroaching- upon his kitchen- 
garden, for the sake of enlarging his works 
on the bowling-green ; and for that reason 
generally ran his first and second parallels 
betwixt two rows of his cabbages and his 
cauliflowers: the conveniencies and incon- 
veniencies of which will be considered at 
large in the history of my uncle Toby's and 
the Corporal's campaigns, of which this I'm 
now writing is but a sketch, and will be 
finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages 
(but there is no guessing). — The campaigns 
themselves will take up as many books; 
and therefore I apprehend it would be 
hanging too great a weight of one kind of 
matter in so flimsy a performance as this, 
to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into 
the body of the work ; — surely they had 
better be printed apart— We'll consider 
the affair; — so take the following sketch of 
them in the mean time : — 



CHAP. XXII. 

When the town, with its works, was 
finished, my uncle Toby and the Corporal 
Degan to run their first parallel, not at ran- 
dom, or any how, — but from the same 
points and distances the dlies had begun 
to run theirs; and regulating their ap- 
proaches and attacks by the accounts my 
uncle Toby received from the daily papers, 
— they went on during the whole siege, 
step by step, with the allies. 

When the Duke of Marlborough made a 
xodgment, — my uncle Toby made a lodg- 
ment too : — and when the face of a bastion 
was battered down, or a defence ruined, — 
the Corporal took his mattock and did as 
much, — and so on; — gaining ground and 
making themselves masters of the works, 
one after another, till the town fell into 
kieir hands. 

^o one who took pleasure in the happy 
state of others, there could not have been 



morning, in which a practicable-breach had 
been made by the Duke of Marlborough i* 
the main body of the place, — to have stood 
behind the horn-beam hedge, and observed 
the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with 
Trim behind him, sallied forth; — the one 
with the Gazette in his hand, — the other 
with a spade on his shoulder to execute the 
contents. — What an honest triumph in my 
uncle Toby's looks, as he marched up to 
the ramparts! what intense pleasure swim- 
ming in his eye, as he stood over the Cor- 
poral, reading the paragraph ten times over 
to him, as he was at work, lest, perad ven- 
ture, he should make the breach an inch 
too wide, — or leave it an inch too narrow ! 
— But when the chamade was beat, and the 
Corporal helped my uncle up it, and fol- 
lowed with the colors in his hand, to fix 
them upon the ramparts, Heaven ! Earth ! 
Sea! — but what avail apostrophes'? — with 
all your elements, wet or dry, you never 
compounded so intoxicating a draught. 

In this track of happiness for many years, 
without one interruption to it, except now 
and then when the wind continued to blow 
due west for a week or ten days together, 
which detained the Flanders mail, and kept 
them so long in torture, but still 'twas the 
torture of the happy : — in this track, I say, 
did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many 
years, every year of which, and sometimes 
every month, from the invention of either 
the one or the other of them, adding some 
new conceit or quirk of improvement to 
their operations, which always opened fresh 
springs of delight in carrying them on. 

The first year's campaign was carried on, 
from beginning to end, in the plain and 
simple method I've related. 

In the second year, in which my uncle 
Toby took Liege and Ruremond, he thought 
he might afford the expense of four hand- 
some draw-bridges; of two of which 1 have 
given an exact description in the former 
part of my work. 

At the latter end of the same year, he 
added a couple of gates with portcullises: 

these last were converted afterwards into 
orgues, as the better thing; and during the 
winter of the same year, my uncle Toby, 
instead of a new suit of clothes, which lie 
always had at Christmas treated himself 



a greater sigh* in the world than on a post, with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at tn« 



1SS 



LIFE AND 



eorner of the bowling-green, betwixt which 
poitv, Pnd the foot of the glacis, there was 
left a little kind of an esplanade, for him and 
the Corporal to confer and hold councils of 
war upon. 

The sentry-box was in case of rain! 

All these were painted white three times 
over the ensuing- spring-, which enabled 
my uncle Toby to take the field with great 
splendor. 

My father would often say to Yorick, 
that if any mortal in the whole universe 
had done such a thing except his brother 
Toby, it would have been looked upon by 
the world as one of the most refined satires 
upon the parade and prancing manner in 
which Louis XIV. from the beginning of 
the war, but particularly that very year, 
had taken the field. — But 'tis not in my 
brother Toby's, nature, kind soul ! my father 
would add, to insult any one. 

—But let us go on. 



CHAP. XXIII. 

I must observe, that although in the first 
year's campaign, the word town is often 
mentioned, — yet there was no town at that 
time within the polygon ; that addition was 
not made till the summer following, the 
spring in which the bridges and sentry-box 
were painted, which was the third year of 
my uncle Toby's campaigns, — when, upon 
his taking Amberg, Bonn, and Rhinberg, 
and Huy and Limbourg, one after another, 
a thought came into the Corporal's head, 
that to talk of taking so many towns, with- 
out one town to show for it, — was a very 
nonsensical way of going to work ; and so 
proposed to my uncle Toby, that they should 
have a little model of a town built for them, 
— to be run up together, of slit deals, and 
then painted, and clapped within the interior 
polygon to serve for all. 

My uncle Toby felt the good of the pro- 
ject instantly, and instantly agreed to it ; 
but with the addition of two singular im- 
provements, of which he was almost as 
oroud, as if he had been the original in- 
ventor of the project itself 

The one was, to have the town built 
exactly in the style of those of which it 
vas most likely to be the representative; 



OPINIONS 

— with grated windows, and the gable-ends 
of the houses facing the streets, &c. &,c. — 
as those in Ghent and Bruges, and the rest 
of the towns in Brabant and Flanders. 

The other was, not to have the houses run 
up together, as the Corporal proposed, but 
to have every house independent, to hook 
on, or off, so as to form into the plan of 
whatever town they pleased. — This was 
put directly into hand ; and many and many 
a look of mutual congratulation was ex- 
changed between my uncle Toby and the 
Corporal, as the carpenter did the work. 

It answered prodigiously the next sum- 
mer; — the town was a perfect Proteus. — It 
was Landen, and Trerebach, and Stantvliet, 
and Drusen, and Hagenau ; — and then it 
was Ostend, and Menin, and Aeth, and 
Dendermond. 

— Surely never did any- town act so 
many parts, since Sodom and Gomorrah, as 
my uncle Toby's town did. 

In the fourth year, my uncle Toby, think- 
ing a town looked foolishly without a church, 
a*lded a very fine one with a steeple. — Trim 

was for having bells in it. My uncle 

Toby said, the metal had better be cast into 
cannon. 

This led the way, the next campaign, 
for half a dozen brass field-pieces, — to be 
planted three and three, on each side of 
my uncle Toby's sentry-box ; and, in a short 
time, these led the way for a train some- 
what larger, — and so on — (as must always 
be the case in hobby-horsical affairs) from 
pieces of half an inch bore, till it came at 
last to my father s jack-boots. 

The next year, which was that in which 
Lisle was besieged, and at the close of which 
both Ghent and Bruges fell into our hands, 
— my uncle Toby was sadly put to it for 
proper ammunition: I say proper ammuni- 
tion, — because his great artillery would not 
bear powder; — and 'twas well for the Shan- 
dy family they would not. — For so full were 
the papers, from the beginning to the end 
of the siege, of the incessant firings kept up 
by the besiegers ; — and so heated was my 
uncle Toby's imagination with the accounts 
of them, that he had infallibly shot away all 
his estate. 

Something therefore was wanting, as a 
succedaneum, especially in one or two of 
the more violent paroxysms of the siege, tt 



Keep up something like a continual fin ig 
in tliH imagination, — and this something 
tne Corporal, whose principal strength lay 
in invention, supplied by an entire new 
system of battering of his own, — without 
which, this had been objected to by military 
critics, to the end of the world, as one of 
tAe great desiderata of my uncle Toby's 
apparatus. 

This will not be explained the worse, for 
setting off, as I generally do, at a little dis- 
tance from the subject. 



CHAP. XXIV. 

With two or three other trinkets, small 
in themselves, but of great regard, which 
poor Tom, the Corporal's unfortunate bro- 
ther, had sent him over, with the account of 
his marriage with the Jew's widow, — there 



A Montero-cap and two Turkish tobacco- 
pipes. 

The Montero-cap I shall describe by and 
by. — The Turkish tobacco-pipes had noth- 
ing particular in them; they were fitted up 
and ornamented as usual, with flexible tubes 
of Morocco leather and gold wire, and 
mounted at their ends, the one of them with 
ivory, — the other with black ebony, tipp'd 
with silver. 

My father, who saw all things in lights 
different from the rest of the world, would 
say to the Corporal, that he ought to look 
upon these two presents more as tokens of 
his brother's nicety than his affection. — 
Tom did not care, Trim, he would say, to 
put on the cap, or to smoke in the tobacco- 
pipe of a Jew. God bless your Honor, 

the Corporal would say, (giving a strong 
reason to the contrary)— how can that be 1 

The Montero-cap was scarlet, of a super- 
fine Spanish cloth, dyed in grain, and 
mounted all round with fur, except about 
four inches in the front, which was faced 
with a light blue, slightly embroidered ; and 
seemed to have been the property of a Por- 
tuguese quarter-master, not of foot, but of 
horse, as the word denotes. 

The Corporal was not a little proud of it . 
as well for "<ts own sake, as for the sake of 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. I8P 

the giver, — so seldom or never put it on but 
upon gala days ; and yet never was a 
Montero-cap put. to so many uses; for in aL 
controverted points., whether military or cu- 
linary, provided the Corporal was sure ho 
was in the right, — it was either his oath,- 
his wager, — or his gift. 

'Twas his gift in the present case. 

I'll be bound, said the Corporal, speaking 
to himself, to give away my Montero-cap 
to the first beggar who comes to the door, 
if I do not manage this matter to his Honor's 
satisfaction. 

The completion was no farther off, than 
the very next morning; which was that of 
the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the 
Lower Deule, to the right, and the gate of 
St. Andrew ; — and on the left, between St 
Magdalen's and the river. 

As this was the most memorable attack 
in the whole war, — the most gallant and 
obstinate on both sides, — and, I must add, 
the most bloody too, (for it cost the allies 
themselves that morning above eleven hun- 
dred men), — my uncle Toby prepared him- 
self for it with a more than ordinary so- 
lemnity. 

The eve which preceded, as my uncle 
Toby went to bed, he ordered his Rami Hie 
wig, which had lain, inside out, for many 
years, in the corner of an old campaigning 
trunk, which stood by his bed-side, to be 
taken out and laid upon the lid of it, ready 
for the morning ; — and the very first thing 
he did, in his shirt, when he had stepped 
out of bed, my uncle Toby, after he had 
turned the rough side outwards, — put it on. 
— This done, he proceeded next to his 
breeches; and having buttoned tne waist- 
band, he forthwith buckled on his sword- 
belt, and had got his sword half-way in, — 
when he considered he should want shav 
ing, and that it would be but very inconve- 
nient doing it with his sword on, — so took it 
off. — In essaying to put on his regimental 
coat and waistcoat, my uncle Toby found the 
same objection in his wig-, — so that went 
off too : — so that, what with one thing and 
what with another, as it always falls out 
when a man is in the most haste, — 'twa« 
ten o'clock, which was half an hour later 
than his usual time, before my uncle Toby 
sallied out. 



190 



LIFE \ND 



CHAP. XXV. 



My uncle Toby had scarce turned the 
corner of his yew-hedge, which separated 
his kitchen-garden from his bowling-green, 
when he perceived the Corporal had begun 
the attack without him. — 

Let me stop and give you a picture of the 
Corporal's apparatus, and of the Corporal 
himself in the height of this attack, just 
as it struck my uncle Toby, as he turned 
:owards the sentry-box, where the Corporal 
■vas at work, — for in Nature there is not 
such another ; — nor can any combination of 
all that is grotesque and whimsical in her 
works produce its equal. 

The corporal 

Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of 
genius, — for he was your kinsman : 

Weed his grave clean, ye men of good- 
ness, — for he was your brother. — Oh, Cor- 
poral ! had I thee, but now, — now, that I 
am able to give thee a dinner and protec- 
tion, — how would I cherish thee! thou 
ehould'st wear thy Montero-cap every hour 
of the day, and every day of the week ; — 
and when it was worn out, I would pur- 
chase thee a couple like it. — But alas ! alas ! 
alas ! now that I can do this, in spite of 
their Reverences, — the occasion is lost, — 
for thou art gone : — thy genius fled up to 
the stars, from whence it came ; — and that 
v/arm heart of thine, with all its generous 
and open vessels, compressed into a clod of 
the vallt y ! 

But what, — what is this, to that future 
and dreaded page, where I look towards the 
velvet pail, decorated with the military en- 
signs of thy Master, — the first, — the fore- 
most of created beings; where, — I shall 
see thee, faithful servant! laying his sword 
and scabbard, with a trembling hand, across 
his coffin, and then returning pale as ashes 
to the door, to take his mourning-horse by 
the bridle to follow his hearse, as he di- 
rected thee : — where all my father's sys- 
tems shall be baffled by his sorrows ; and, 
m spite of his philosophy, I shall behold 
him, as he inspects the lacquered plate, 
twic^ taking his spectacles from off his nose, 
to wipe away the dew which Nature has 
shed upon them. — When I see him cast in 
.he rosemary witn an air of disconsolation, 
which cries through ny ears, — Toby ! in 



op;nions 

w' at corner of the world shall I seek thy 
fellow ? 

— Gracious powers ! which erst have 
opened the lips of the dumb in his distress, 
and made the tongue of the stammerer 
speak plain, — when I shall arrive at this 
dreaded page, deal not with me, then, with 
a stinted hand. 



CHAP. XXVI. 

• 
The Corporal, who the night before had 
resolved in his mind to supply the grand 
desideratum, of keeping up something like 
an incessant firing upon the enemy during 
the heat of the attack, — had no farther 
idea in his fancy at that time, than a con- 
trivance of smoking tobacco against the 
town, out of one of my uncle Toby's six 
field-pieces, which were planted on each 
side of his sentry-box ; the means of effect- 
ing which occurring to his fancy at the 
same time, though he had pledged his cap, 
hn thought it in no danger from the mis- 
carriage of his projects. 

Upon turning it this way and that a little 
in his mind, he soon began to find out, that, 
by means of his two Turkish tobacco-pipes, 
with the supplement of three smaller tubea 
of wabh-'eather at each of their lower ends, 
to be tagg'd by the same number of tin- 
pipes fitted to the touch-holes, and sealed 
with clay next the cannon, and then tied 
hermetically with waxed silk at their 
several insertions into the morocco tube, — 
he should be able to fire the six field-pieces 
all together, and with the same ease as to 
fire one. 

— Let no man say from what tags and 
jaggs hints may not be cut out for the ad- 
vancement of human knowledge. Let no 
man, who has read my father's first and 
second beds of justice, ever rise up and say 
again, from collision of what kinds of bodies 
light may or may not be struck out, to 
carry the Arts and Sciences up to perfec- 
tion. — Heaven ! thou knowest how I love 
them; — thou knowest the secrets of my 
heart, and that I would this moment give 

my shirt Thou art a fool, Shandy, say* 

Eugenius, — for thou hast but a dozen in tha 
world, and 'tw .11 b 'eak thy set. — 



OF TRISTRAM IIHANDY. 

No matter for that, Eugenius ; I would 
give the shirt off' my back to be burnt into 
tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish 
inquirer. How many sparks, at one good 
stroke, a good flint and steel could strike 
into the tail of it. — Think ye not, that in 
striking these in, — he might, peradventure, 
strike something out ? — as sure as a gun. 

— But this project by the bye. 

The Corporal sat up the best part of the 
night, in bringing his to perfection ; and 
having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, 
with charging them to the top with tobac- 
co, — he went with contentment to bed. 



191 

puff, into the very heignt of the attack, by 
the time my uncle Toby joined him. 

'Twas well for my father, that my uncle 
Toby had not his will to make that day. 



CHAP. XXVIII. 



My uncle Toby took the ivory pipe out 
of the Corporal's hand ; — looked at it for 
half a minute, and returned it. 

In less than two minutes, my uncle Toby 
took the pipe from the Corporal again, and 
raised it half-way to his mouth, — then 
hastily gave it back a second- time. 

The Corporal redoubled the attack ; — 
my uncle Toby smiled, — then looked grave, 
— then smiled for a moment, — then looked 
serious for a long time. — Give me hold of 
the ivory pipe, Trim, said my uncle Toby. 
— My uncle Toby put it to his lips, — drew 
it back directly, — gave a peep over the 
horn-beam hedge. — Never did my uncle 
Toby's mouth water so much for a pipe in 
his life. — My uncle Toby retired into the 
sentry-box with the pipe in his hand. — 

— Dear uncle Toby ! don't go into the 

rust- 
ing a man's self with such a thing in such 
a corner. 



CHAP. XXVII. 

The Corporal had slipped out about ten 
minutes before my uncle Toby, in order to 
fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy 
a shot or two before my uncle Toby came. 

He had drawn the six field-pieces for 
this end, all close up together in front of 
my uncle Toby's sentry-box, leaving only 
an interval of about a yard and a half be- 
twixt the three, on the right and left, for 

the convenience of charging, &c. — and the | sentry-box with the pipe ; — there's no 
sake, possibly, of two batteries, which he 
might think double the honor of one. 

In the rear, and facing this opening, with 
his back to the door of his sentry-box, for 
fear of being flanked, had the Corporal 
wisely taken his post. — He held the ivory 
pipe appertaining to the battery on the 
right, betwixt the finger and thumb of his 
right hand: — and the ebony pipe tipp'd 
with silver, which appertained to the bat- 
tery on the left, betwixt the finger and 
thumb of the other ; — and with his right 
knee fixed firm upon the ground, as if in, 
the front rank of his platoon, was the Cor- 
poral, with his Montero-cap upon his head, 
furiously playing off his two cross-batteries 
at the same time against the counter-guard, 
which faced the counterscarp, where the 
attack was to be made that morning. His 
first intention, as I said, was no more than 
giving the enemy a single puff or two ; — 
but the pleasure of the puffs, as well as 
the puffing, had insensibly got hold of the 
Orwal. and drawn him on from puff to 



CHAP. XXIX. 

I beg the reader will assist me heie, to 
wheel off my uncle Toby's ordnance behind 
the scenes ; — to remove his sentry-box, and 
clear the theatre, if possible, of horn-works 
and half-moons, and get the rest of his 
military apparatus out of the way; — that 
done, my dear friend Garrick, we'll snuff 
the candles bright, sweep the stage with a 
new broom, — draw up the curtain, and ex- 
hibit my uncle Toby dressed in a new 
character, throughout which the world can 
have no idea how he will act : and yet, if 
pity be akin to love, — and bravery no alien 
to it, you have seen enough of my unclr 
Toby in these, to trace these family like- 
nesses betwixt the two passions (in cane 
there is one) to your heart's content. 



102 



Vain science! thou assistest us in no 
case of this Kind, — and thou puzzlest us in 
every one. 

There was, Madam, in my uncle Toby, 
a singleness of heart, which misled him so 
far out of the little serpentine tracks in 
which things of this nature usually go on, 
you can — you can have no conception of it: 
with this, there was a plainness and sim- 
plicity of thinking, with such an unmis- 
trusting ignorance of the plies and foldings 
of the heart of woman ; — and so naked and 
defenceless did he stand before you (when 
3 siege was out of his head) that you might 
have stood behind any one of your serpen- 
tine walks, and shot my uncle Toby, ten 
times in a day, through his liver ; if nine 
times in a day, Madam, had not served 
your purpose. 

With all this, Madam, — and what con- 
founded every thing as much on the other 
hand, my uncle Toby had that unparalleled 
modesty of nature I once told you of, and 
which, by the bye, stood eternal sentry 
upon his feeling's, that you might as soon 
But where am I going ? These reflec- 
tions crowd in upon me ten pages at least 
too soon, and take up that time which I 
ought to bestow upon facts. 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

cept Cappadocius and Pontus, who were 
both a little suspected) ever once bowed 
down his breast to the goddess. — The truth 
is, they had all of them something else to 
do ; — and so had my uncle Toby, — till Fate, 
— till Fate, I say, envying his name the 
glory of being handed down to posterity 
with Aldrovandus's and the rest, — she 
basely patched up the peace of Utrecht. 

— Believe me, Sirs, 'twas the worst deed 
she did that year. 



CHAP. XXX. 

Of the few legitimate sons of Adam, 
whose breasts never felt what the sting of 
love was — (maintaining first all misogynists 
to be bastards) — the greatest heroes of an- 
cient and modern story have carried off 
amongst them nine parts in ten of the 
honor; and I wish, for their sakes, I had 
the key of my study, out of the draw-well, 
only for five minutes, to tell you their 
names; — recollect them I cannot, — so be 
content to accept of these, for the present, 
u» tneir stead. 

There was the great king Aldrovandus, 
and bosphorus, and Cappadocius, and Darda- 
•ius, and Pontuh, and Asius, — to say nothing 
of the lron-nearted Charles the Xllth, whom 
the Countess of K***** herself could make 
nothing of. — There w T as Baoylonicus, and 
Mediterraneus, and Polixenes, and Persi- 
CU8. and Prusicus ; not one of whom (ex- 



CHAP. XXXI. 

Amongst the many ill consequences of 
the treaty of Utrecht, it was within a point 
of giving my uncle Toby a surfeit of sieges; 
and though he recovered his appetite after- 
wards, yet Calais itself left not a deeper 
scar in Mary's heart, than Utrecht upon 
my uncle Toby's. To the end of his life 
he never could hear Utrecht mentioned 
upon any account whatever, — or so much 
as read an article of news extracted out of 
the Utrecht Gazette, without fetching a 
sigh, as if his heart would break in twain. 

My father, who was a great motive-mon- 
ger, and consequently a very dangerous 
person for a man to sit by, either laughing 
or crying, — for he generally knew your 
motive for doing both, much better than 
you knew it yourself, — would always con- 
sole my uncle Toby upon these occasions, 
in a way which showed plainly he imagined 
my uncle Toby grieved for nothing in the 
whole affair, so much as the loss of his 
hobby-horse. — Never mind, brother Toby, 
he would say, — by God's blessing, we shall 
have another war break out again some of 
these days; and when it does, the bellige- 
rent powers, if they would hang themselves, 
cannot keep us out of play. — I defy 'em, 
my dear Toby, he would add, to take coun- 
tries without taking towns, — or towns 
without sieges. 

My uncle Toby never took this back- 
stroke of my father's at his hobby-horse 
kindly. — He thought the stroke ungene- 
rous ; and the more so, because in striking 
the horse he hit the rider too, and in the 
most dishonorable part a blow could fall ; sc 
that, upon these occasions, he alwav** laid 



OF TRISTKAM SHAN DY. 



1«J3 



rtown his pipe upon the table with more 
fire to defend himself than common. 

I told the reader, this time two years, 
(hat my uncle Toby was not eloquent ; and 
n the very same page gave an instance to 
the contrary. — I repeat the observation, and 
a fact which contradicts it again. — He was 
not eloquent, — it was not easy to my uncle 
Toby to make long harangues, — and he 
hated florid ones ; but there were occasions 
where the stream overflowed the man, and 
ran so counter to its usual course, that in 
some parts, my uncle Toby, for a time, was 
at least equal to Tertullus; — but in others, 
in my own opinion, infinitely above him. 

My father was so highly pleased with one 
of these apologetical orations of my uncle 
Toby, which he had delivered one evening 
before him and Yorick, that he wrote it down 
before he went to bed. 

1 have had the good fortune to meet with 
it amongst my father's papers, with here 
and there an insertion of his own, betwixt 
two crooks, thus, [ ], and is indorsed, 
My brother Toby's justification of his own 
principles and conduct in wishing to con- 
tinue the war. 

I may safely say, I have read over this 
apologetical oration of my uncle Toby's a 
hundred times; and think it so fine a model 
of defence, and shows so sweet a tempera- 
ment of gallantry and good principles in 
him, that I give it the world, word for word 
(interlineations and all) as I find it. 



CHAP. XXXII. 

MY UNCLE TOBY'S APOLOGETICAL ORATION. 

I am not insensible, brolher Shandy, that 
when a man, whose profession is arms, 
wishes, as I have done, for war, it has an 
ill aspect to the world : — and that, how just 
and right soever his motives and intentions 
may be, — he stands in an uneasy posture 
in vindicating himself from private views 
m doing it. 

For this cause, if a soldier is a prudent 
man, which he may be without being a jot 
the less brave, he will be sure not to utter 
nis wish in the hearing of an enemy ; for 
say what he will, an enemy will not believe 
him. — He will be cautious of doing it even 
Z 



to a friend, — lest he may suffer in his 
esteem ; but if his heart is overcharged, and 
a secret sigh for arms must have its vent, hfi 
will reserve it for the ear of a brother, who 
knows his character to the bottom, and what 
his true notions, dispositions, and principles 
of honor are. What, I hope, I have been in 
all these, brother Shandy, would be unbe- 
coming in me to say : — much worse, I know, 
have I been than I ought, — and something 
worse, perhaps, than I think : but such as I 
am, you, my dear brother Shandy, who have 
sucked the same breasts with me, — and with 
whom I have been brought up from my 
cradle, — and from whose knowledge, from 
the first hours of our boyish pastimes, down 
to this, I have concealed no one action of 
my life, and scarce a thought in it ; — such 
as I am, brother, you must, by this time, 
know me, with all my vices, and with all 
my weaknesses too, whether of my age, my 
temper, my passions, or my understanding. 

Tell me then, my dear brother Shandy, 
upon which of them it is, that when I con- 
demned the peace of Utrecht, and grieved 
the war was not carried on with vigor a 
little longer, you should think your brothei 
did it upon unworthy views ; or that, in 
wishing for war, he should be bad enough 
to wish more of his fellow-creatures slain, 
— more slaves made, — and more families 
driven from their peaceful habitations, 
merely for his own pleasure. — Tell me, bro- 
ther Shandy, upon what one deed of mine 
do you ground it, 1 — [The devil a deed do 
I know of, dear Toby, but one for an hun- 
dred pounds, which I lent thee to carry on 
these cursed sieges.] 

If, when I was a school-boy, I could not 
hear a drum beat, but my heart beat with 
it, — was it my fault 1 — Did I plant the pro- 
pensity there 1 — Did I sound the alarm 
within, or Nature. 

When Guy, Earl of Warwick, and Paris 
mus and Parismenus, and Valentine and 
Orson, and the Seven Champions of Eng- 
land, were handed around the school, - 
were they not all purchased with my own 
pocket-money 1 — Was that selfish, brothei 
Shandy 1 — When we read over the siege 
of Troy, which lasted ten years and eighl 
months, — though with such a train of artil- 
lery as we had at Namur, the town might 
have been carried in a weeK - -was I not ai 
17 



]U4 LIFE AND 

much vioru erned for the destruction of the 
Greeks and Trojans as any boy of the 
whole school ? — Had I not three strokes of 
a ferula given me, two on my right hand, 
and one on my left, for calling Helena a 
bitch for it ? — Did any one of you shed more 
tears for Hector? — And when king Priam 
came to the camp to beg his body, and re- 
turned weeping back to Troy without it, — 
vou know, brother, I could not eat my din- 
ner. 

Did that bespeak me cruel ? — Or be- 
cause, brother Shandy, my blood flew out 
into the camp, and my heart panted for war, 
— was it a proof it could not ache for the 
distresses of war tool 

O brother ! 'tis one thing for a soldier to 
gather laurels, — and 'tis another to scatter 
cypress. — [ Who told thee, my dear Toby, 
that cypress was used by the ancients on 
mournful occasions ?] — 

'Tis one thing, brother Shandy, for a 
soldier to hazard his own life, — to leap first 
down into the trench, where he is sure to 
be cut in pieces: — 'Tis one thing, from 
public spirit and a thirst of glory, to enter 
the breach the first man, to stand in the 
foremost rank, and march bravely on with 
drums and trumpets, and colors flying about 
his ears : — 'Tis one thing, I say, brother 
Shandy, to do this; — and 'tis another thing 
to reflect on the miseries of war ; — to view 
the desolations of whole countries, and con- 
sider the intolerable fatigues and hardships 
which the soldier himself, the instrument 
who works them, is forced (for sixpence a 
day, if he can get it) to undergo. 

Need I be told, dear Yorick, as I was by 
you in Le Fevre's funeral sermon, That so 
soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to 
mercy, and kindness, as man is, was not 
shaped for this ? — But why did you not add, 
Yorick, — if not by Nature — that he is so 
by Necessity? — For what is war? what is 
it, \orick, when fought, as ours has been, 
upon principles of liberty, and upon prin- 
ciples of honor ? — what is it, but the getting 
together of quiet and harmless people, with 
their swords in their hands, to keep the 
ambitious and the turbulent within bounds? 
- And Heaven is my witness, brother 
Shandy, that the pleasure I have taken in 
these things, — and that infinite delight, in 
oarticular, which has attended my sieges 



OPINIONS 

in my bowling-green, has arose within me, 
and I hope in the Corporal too, from the 
consciousness we both had, that, in carry- 
ing them on, we were answering the great 
end of our creation. 



CHAP. XXXIII. 

I told the christian reader; — I say 
christian, — hoping he is one ; — and if he 
is not, I am sorry for it, — and only beg he 
wiL consider the matter with himself, ana 
not lay the blame entirely upon this book ;- - 

I told him, Sir, — for in good truth, when 
a man is telling a story in the strange way 
I do mine, he is obliged continually to be 
going backwards and forwards to keep all 
tight together in the reader's fancy; — which, 
for my own part, if I did not take heed to 
do more than at first, there is so much un- 
fixed and equivocal matter starting up, with 
so many breaks and gaps in it, — and so little 
service do the stars afford, which never- 
theless I hang up in some of the darkest 
passages, knowing that the world is apt to 
lose its way, with all the lights the sun 
itself at noon-day can give it, — and now you 
see, I'm lost myself! 

But 'tis my father's fault ; and whenever 
my brains come to be dissected, you will 
perceive, without spectacles, that he has 
left a large uneven thread, as you some- 
times see in an unsaleable piece of cambric, 
running along the whole length of the web, 
and so untowardly, you cannot so much as 
cut out a * *, (here I hang up a couple of 
lights again) — or a fillet, or a thumb-stall, 
but it is seen or felt. — 

Quanto id diligentius in liberis procre- 

andis cavendum, sayeth Carden. All 

which being considered, and that you see 
'tis morally impracticable for me to wind 
this round to where I set out, — I begin the 
chapter over again. 



CHAP. XXXIII. 

I told the christian reader, in the be- 
ginning of the chapter which preceded my 
uncle Toby's apologetical oration, — though 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 



ip a different trope from what I shall make 
use of now, That the peace of Utrecht was 
within an ace of creating the same shyness 
betwixt my uncle Toby and his Hobby- 
horse, as it did betwixt the Queen and the 
rest of the confederating- powers. 

There is an indignant way in which a 
man sometimes dismounts his horse, which 
as good as says to him, " I'll go afoot, Sir,. 
" all the days of my life, before I would 
" ride a single mile upon your back again." 
Now, my uncle Toby could not be said to 
dismount his horse in this manner; for, in 
strictness of language, he could not be said 
to dismount his horse at all, — his horse 
rather flung him, — and somewhat viciously, 
which made my uncle Toby take it ten 
times more unkindly. Let this matter be 
settled by state jockeys as they like; — it 
created, I say, a sort of shyness betwixt 
my uncle Toby and his Hobby-horse : — He 
had no occasion for him from the month of 
March to November, which was the summer 
after the articles were signed, except it was 
now and then to take a short ride out, just 
to see that the fortifications and harbor of 
Dunkirk were demolished, according to 
stipulation. 

The French were so backward all that 
summer in setting about that affair; and 
Monsieur Tugghe, the deputy from the 
magistrates of Dunkirk, presented so many 
affecting petitions to the Queen, beseeching 
her Majesty to cause only her thunderbolts 
to fall upon the martial works which might 
nave incurred her displeasure, — but tospare, 
— to spare the mole, for the mole's sake ; 
which, in its naked situation, could be no 
more than an object of pity ; — and the 
Queen (who was but a woman) being of a 
pitiful disposition, — and her ministers also, 
they not wishing in their hearts to have 
the town dismantled, for these private rea- 



.9? 

-Fatal interval oi w 



him to set about it. 
activity ! 

The Corporal was for beginning the de~ 
molition, by making a breach in the ram- 
parts, or main fortifications of the town. — 
No ; — that will never do, Corporal, said my 
uncle Toby; for, in going that way to work 
with the town, the English garrison will 
not be safe in it an hour ; because, if the 
French are treacherous, — They are as 
treacherous as Devils, an' please your 
Honor, said the Corporal. — It gives me 
concern always when I hear it, Trim, said 
my uncle Toby, — for they don't want per- 
sonal bravery ; and if a breach is made 
in the ramparts, they may enter it, ana 
make themselves masters of the place when 

they please. Let them enter it, said the 

Corporal, lifting up the pioneer's spade in 
both his hands, as if he was going to lay 
about him with it, — let them enter, an' 

please your Honor, if they dare. In 

cases like this, Corporal, said my uncle 
Toby, slipping his right hand down to the 
middle of his cane, and holding it after- 
wards truncheon-wise, with his fore-finger 
extended, — 'tis no part 01 the consideration 
of a commandant, what the enemy dare, or 
what they dare not do ; he must act with 
prudence. We will begin with the out- 
works both towards the sea and the land, 
and particularly with Fort Louis, the most 
distant of them all, and demolish it first ; — 
and the rest one by one, both on our right 
and left, as we retreat towards the town ; 
— then we'll demolish the mole, — next fill 
up the harbor, — then retire into the citadel, 
and blow it up into the air; and having 
done that, Corporal, we'll embark foi Eng- 
land. We are there, quoth the Corporal, 

recollecting himself. — Very true, said my 
uncle Toby, — looking at the church. 



sons, 

* 



***** * ; so that 

the whole went heavily on with my uncle 
Toby; insomuch, that it was not within 
three full months, after he and the Corporal 
had constructed the town, and put it in a 
condition to be destroyed, that the several 
commandants, commissaries, deputies, ne- 
gotiators, and intendants, would permit 



CHAP. XXXIV. 

A delusive, delicious consultation or two 
of this kind, betwixt my uncle Toby and 
Trim, upon the demolition of Dunkirk, — for 
a moment rallied back the ideas of those plea 
sures, which were slipping from under him. 
Still, — still all went on heavily; the magic 
left the mind the weaker, Stillness, .vitr> 



196 LIFE AND 

Silence at her back, entered the solitary 
parlor, and drew their gauzy mantle over 
my uncle Toby's head; — and Listlessness, 
with her lax fibre .and undirected eye, sat 
quietly down beside him in his arm-chair. 
—No longer Amberg, and Rhinberg, and 
Limbourg, and Huy, and Bonn, in one year; 
— and the prospect of Landen, and Trere- 
bach, and Drusen, and Dendermond, the 
next, — hurried on the blood: — No longer 
did saps, and mines, and blinds, and gabions, 
and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of 
man's repose : — No more could my uncle 
Toby, after passing the French lines, as he 
eat his egg at supper, from thence break 
into the heart of France, — cross over the 
Oyse, and with all Picardie open behind 
him, march up to the gates of Paris, and 
fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory: 
— No more was he to dream he had fixed 
the royal standard upon the tower of the 
Bastile, and awake with it streaming in his 
head : 

— Softer visions, gentler vibrations, 

stole sweetly in upon his slumbers; the 
trumpet of war fell out of his hands; — he 
took up the lute, sweet instrument! of all 
others the most delicate ! the most difficult! 
— how wilt thou touch it, my dear uncle 
Toby? 



CHAP. XXXV. 

"Now, because I have once or twice said, 
iti my inconsiderate way of talking, that I 
was confident the following memoirs of my 
uncle Toby's courtship of Widow Wadman, 
whenever I got time to write them, would 
lurn out one of the most complete systems, 
both of the elementary and practical part 
of love and love-making, that ever was ad- 
dressed to the world, — are you to imagine 
from thence, that I shall set out with a 
description of what love is? whether part 
God and part Devil 7 as Plotinus will have 
it;— 

— Or Dy a more critical equation, and, 
supposing the whole of love to be as ten. ? 
to determine, with Ficinus, "how many 
"parts of it the one? and how many the 

other?'''' — or whether it is all of it one 
4(real devil, from head to tail; as Plato has 



OriNIt INS 

taken upon him to pronounce ; concerning 
which conceit of his, I shall not offer my 
opinion : — but my opinion of Plato is this 
That he appears, from this instance, to 
have been a man of much the same temper 
and way of reasoning with Dr. Baynard ; 
who being a great enemy to blisters, as 
imagining that half a dozen of 'em on at 
once, would draw a man as surely to his 
grave, as a hearse and six, — rashly con- 
cluded, that the Devil himself was nothing 
in the world, but one great bouncing Can- 
tharides. 

I have nothing to say to people who al- 
low themselves this monstrous liberty in 
arguing, but what Nazianzen cried out 
(that is, polemically) to Philagrius. 

"JLvycl" O rare! "'tis fine reasoning, Sir, 

indeed! — on </>tX<5<ro</>n? ev WaQiai andmost 

nobly do you aim at truth, when you phi- 
losophize about it in your moods and pas- 
sions. 

Nor is it to be imagined, for the same 
reason, I should stop to inquire, whether 
love is a disease, — or embroil myself with 
Rhasis and Dioscorides, whether the seat 
of it- is in the brain or liver, — because this 
would lead me on to an examination of the 
two very opposite manners in which pa- 
tients have been treated, — the one, of 
Aastius, who always began with a cooling 
clyster of hemp-seed and bruised cucumbers; 
— and followed on with thin potations of 
water-lilies and purslane, — to which he 
added a pinch of snuff; of the herb Hanea; 
and, where Asetius durst venture it, his 
topaz ring. 

— The other, that of Gordonius, who (in 
his cap. 15, de Amore) directs they should 
be thrashed " ad putorem usque" — till they 
stink again. 

These are the disquisitions which my 
father, who had laid in a great stock of 
knowledge of this kind, will be very busy 
with in the progress of my uncle Toby's 
affairs: I must anticipate thus much: That 
from his theories of love (with whicn, by 
the way, he contrived to crucify my uncle 
Toby's mind almost as much as his amours 
themselves) — he took a single step into 
practice ; and, by means of a camphorated 
cerecloth, which he found means to impose 
upon the taylor for buckram, whilst lie was 
making my uncle Toby a new pair c* 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



9? 



Drenches, he produced Gordonius's effect 
upon my uncle Toby, without the disgrace. 
What changes this produced, will be 
read in its proper place : all that is needful 
to be added to the anecdote, is this : That 
whatever effect it had upon my uncle Toby, 
it had a vile effect upon the house; and, if 
my uncle Toby had not smoked it down as 
he did, it might have had a vile effect upon 
civ father too. 



CHAP. XXXVI. 

— 'Twill come out of itself, by and bye. 
— All I contend for is, that I am not obliged 
en set out with a definition of what love is; 
and so Ion? as I can go on with my story 
intelligibly, with the help of the word itself, 
without any other idea to it than what I 
n«ve in common with the rest of the world, 
vhv should I differ from it a moment be- 
fore the time? — When I can get on no 
further, — and find myself entangled on all 
sides in this mystic labyrinth, — my opinion 
will then come in, in course, — and lead me 
out. 

At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently 
understood, in telling the reader, my uncle 
Toby fell in love: 



— Not that the phrase is at all to my 
liking: for to say a man is fallen in love, 
— or that he is deeply in love ; — or up tc 
the ears in love ; — and sometimes even 
over head and ears in it, carries an idiom- 
atical kind of implication, that love is a 
thing lelow a man. — This is recurring 
again to Plato's opinion, which, with all 
his divinityship, — I hold to be damnable 
and heretical ; — and so much for that 

Let love therefore be what it will, — my 
uncle Toby fell into it. 

— And possibly, gentle reader, with such a 
temptation, — so would'st thou : — For never 
did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence 
covet, any thing in this world more concu« 
piscible than Widow Wadman. 



CHAP. XXXVII. 

To conceive this right, — call for pen and 
ink ; — here's paper ready to your hand.— 
Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind ; 
— as like your mistress as you can, — aa 
unlike your wife as your conscience wili 
let you, — 'tis all one to me, — please bu 
your own fancy in it 



17« 



.9i* LIFE AND OPINIONS 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 



JQQ 



Was ever any thing in naiure so sweet ! 
—so exquisite ! 

— Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle 
Toby resist it? 

Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one 
page, at least, within thy covers, which 
Malice will not blacken, and which Igno- 
ance cannot misrepresent 



CHAP. XXXIX. 

As Susannah was informed, by an ex- 
press from Mrs, Bridget, of my uncle 
Toby's falling in love with her mistress, 
fifteen days before it happened, — the con- 
tents of which express Susannah commu- 
nicated to my mother the next day; — it has 
iust given me an opportunity of entering 
upon my uncle Toby's amours a fortnight 
before their existence. 

I have an article of news to tell you, Mr. 
Shandy, quoth my mother, which will sur- 
prise you greatly. — 

Now my father was then holding one of 
his second beds of justice, and was musing 
within himself about the hardships of mat- 
rimony, as my mother broke silence. 

" — My brother Toby, quoth she, is going 
to be married to Mrs. Wad man !" 

■ — Then he will never, quoth my father, 
be able to lie diagonally in his bed again, 
as long as he lives. 

It was a consuming vexation to my 
father, that my mother never asked the 
meaning of a thing she did not understand. 

— That she is not a woman of science, 
my father would say, is her misfortune ; — 
but she might ask a question. — 

My mother never did. — In short, she 
went out of the world, at last, without 
knowing whether it turned round, or stood 
still. — My father had officiously told her 
above a thousand times, which way it was ; 
—but she always forgot. 

For these reasons, a discourse seldom 
went on much farther betwixt them than a 
proposition, — a reply, and a rejoinder; at 
th* 1 end of which, it generally took breath 
'or a few minutes (as in the affair of the 
.treeches) and then went on again. 

If he marries, 'twill be the worse for us, 
quotn my mother. 

— Not a cherry-stone, said my father ; — 



he may as well batter away his means upon 
that, as any thing else. 

— To be sure, said my mother. So here 
ended the proposition, — the reply, — and the 
rejoinder, I told you of. 

— It will be some amusement to him, 
too, said my father. 

— A very great one, answered my mo- 
ther, if he should have children. 

— Lord have mercy upon me ! said my 

father to himself. * * * * 

******** 

***** * * 

* * * * % 

* * * * • 



* * * 

* * * 

* * * 



CHAP. XL. 

I am now beginning to get fairly into my 
work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, 
with a few of the cold seeds, I make no 
doubt but I shall be able to go on with my 
uncle Toby's story and my own, in a toler 
able straight line. Now, 




These were the four lines I moved in 
through my first, second, third, and fourth 
volumes. * — In the fifth volume I have been 
very good, — the precise line 1 have dv 
scribed in it being this : — 




By which it appears, that except at the 
curve, marked A, where I took a trip 10 



* Alluding to the first edition 



200 



LIFE AND OPINIONS, &c. 



Navdrr^ ; — and the indented curve B, which 
is the short airing 1 when I was there with 
the lady Baussiere and h«if page, — I have 
not taken the least frisk of a digression, till 
John de la Casse's Devils led me the round 
you see marked D ; — for as for ccccc, they 
are nothing but parentheses, and the common 
ins and outs incident to the lives of the 
greatest ministers of state ; and when com- 
pared with what men have done,— or with 
my own transgressions at the letters A B D, 
— they vanish into nothing. 

In this last volume I have done better 
still, — for from the end of Le Fevre's epis- 
ode, to the beginning- of my uncle Toby's 
campaigns — I have scarce stepped a yard 
cut of my way. 

If I mend at this rate, it is not impossi- 
ble, — by the good leave of his Grace of 
Benevento's Devils, but I may arrive here- 
after at the excellency of going on even 
thus : 



which is a line drawn as straight as I 
could draw it by a writing-master's rule* 
(borrowed for that purpose) turning neithet 
to the right hand nor to the lefl. 

— This right line, — the patnway tor 
christians to walk in ! say divines, — 

— The emblem of moral rectitude ! says 
Cicero, — 

— The best line ! say cabbag^e-planters, — 
is the shortest line, says Archimedes, wnicn 
can be drawn from one given point to an- 
other. 

I wish your Ladyships would lay this 
matter to heart, in your next birth-day 
suits ! 

— What a journey ! 

Pray can you tell me, — that is, witnom 
anger, before I write my chapter nnon 
straight lines, — by what mistake, — wn 
told them so, — or how it has come to pass, 
that your men of wit and genius nave an 
along confounded this line witn tne nnt at 
gravitation 1 



TUB 

LIFE AND OPINIONS 

OF 

GENTLEMAN. 



CHAP. I. 

NO: — T think I said, I would write two 
volumes every year, provided the vile cough, 
which then tormented me, and which to 
chis hour I dread worse than the Devil, 
would but give me leave ; — and in another 
place — (but where, I can't recollect now) 
speaking of my book as a machine, and lay- 
ing my pen and ruler down cross-wise upon 
Che table, in order to gain the greater credit 
to it, — I swore it should be kept a-going at 
chat rate these forty years, if it pleased but 
the Fountain of Life to bless me so long 
with health and good spirits. 

Now, as for my spirits, little have I to 
fay to their charge, — nay, so very little 
(unless the mounting me upon a long stick, 
and playing the fool with me nineteen hours 
out of the twenty-four, be accusations) — 
that, on the contrary, I have much, — much 
to thank 'em for. Cheerily have ye made 
me tread the path of life, with all the bur- 
dens of it (except its cares) upon my back : 
in no one moment of my existence, that I 
remember, have ye once deserted me, or 
tinged the objects which came in my way, 
either with sable, or with a sickly green : 
in dangers ye gilded my horizon with hope ; 
and wiien Death himself knocked at my 
door, — ye bade him come again; and in so 
gay a tone of careless indifference did ye do 
it, that he doubted of his commission. 

" — There must certainly be some mistake 
•'in this matter," quoth he. 

Now there is nothing in this world I 
abominate worse, than to be interrupted in 
«. story; — and I was that moment telling 
Eugenius a most tawdry one, in my way, 
of a nun who fancied herself a shell-fish ; 
and of a monk dainn'd for eating a muscle; 
2 A 



and was showing him the grounds and jus 
tice of the procedure. 

" — Did ever so gra 'e a personage get 

" into so vile a scrape J" quoth Death. 

Thou hast had a narrow escape, Tristram, 
said Eugenius, taking hold of my hand as 
I finished my story.— 

But there is no living, Eugenius, replied 
I, at this rate ; for as this so?i of a whore 
has found out my lodgings, — 

You call him rightly, said Eugenius, 

— for by sin, we are told, he enter'd the 
world. — I care not which way he enter d, 
quoth I, provided he be not in such a hurry 
to take me out with him, — for I have forty 
volumes to write, and forty thousand things 
to say and do, which nobody in the world 
will say and do for me, except thyself; and 
as thou seest he has got me by the throat, 
(for Eugenius could scarce hear me speak 
across the table) and that I am no match 
for him in the open field, had I not better 
whilst these few scatter'd spirits remain 
and these two spider legs of mine (holding 
one of them up to him) are able to support 
me, — had I not better, Eugenius, fly for my 
life'! — 'Tis my advice, my dear Tristram, 
said Eugenius. — Then, by Heaven ! I will 
lead him a dance he little thinks of; — for I 
will gallop, quoth I, without looking once 
behind me, to the banks of the Garrone ; — 
and if I hear him clattering at my heels, — 
1*11 scamper away to Mount Vesuvius; — 
from thence to Joppa, and from Joppa to the 
world's end; where, if he follows me, I pray 
God he may break his neck. — 

He runs more risk there, said Eugeniua, 
than thou. 

Eugenius's wit and affection brought 
blood into the cheek from whence it had 
been some months banish'd :- " W(16 a vile 



202 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

he led me to r.iy 



moment ro bid adieu in 

chaise. — Allons ! said I ; the post-boy gave 

a crack with his whip, — off I went like a 

cannon, and at half a dozen bounds got into 

Dover. 



CHAP. III. 



CHAP. II. 



Now, hang it! quoth I, as I look'd towards 
tie French coast, — a man should know 
something of his own country too, before 
he goes abroad ; — and I never gave a peep 
into Rochester church, or took notice of the 
dock of Chatham, or visited St. Thomas at 
Canterbury, though they all three lay in 
my way. 

— But mine, indeed, is a particular case. 

— So, without arguing the matter further 
with Thomas o'Becket, or any one else, — I 
skipp'd into the boat, and in five minutes 
we got under sail, and scudded away like 
the wind. 

Pray, Captain, quoth I, as I was going 
down into the cabin, is a man never over- 
taken by Death in this passage? — 

Why, there is not time for a man to be 
sick in it, replied he. — What a cursed liar ! 
for I am sick as a horse, quoth I, already. — 
What a brain ! — upside down ! — hey-day ! 
— the cells are broke loose one into another, 
and the blood, and the lymph, and the ner- 
vous juices, with the fix'd and volatile salts, 
are all jumbled into one mass ! — good G — ! 
every thing turns round in it like a thou- 
sand whirlpools. — I'd give a shilling to know 
if I shan't write the clearer for it. — 

Sick ! sick ! sick ! sick ! — 

When shall we get to land, Captain? — 
tney have hearts like stones. — O I am deadly 
sick ! — Reach me that thing, boy : — 'tis the 
most discomfiting sickness, — I wish I was 
at the bottom. — Madam, how is it with you ? 

— Undone! undone! un O! undone, Sir. 

— What ! the first time ? — No, 'tis the sec- 
ond, third, sixth, tenth time, Sir. — Hey-day, 
— what a trampling over-head ! — Hollo ! 
cabin-boy ! wha\< s the matter 1 — 

The wind chopp'd about ! — S'death ! — 
then i shall meet him full in the face. 

— What luck ! — 'tis chopp'd about again, 
master — O the Devil chop it. 

Captain, quoth she, for Heaven's sake, 



It is a great inconvenience to a man in 
a haste, that there are three distinct roads 
between Calais and Paris; in behalf of 
which, there is so much to be said by the 
several deputies from the towns which lie 
along them, that half a day is easily lost in 
settling which you'll take. 

First, The road by Lisle and Arras, which 
is the most about, — but most interesting 
and instructing: 

The second, That by Amiens ; which you 
may go, if you would see Chantilly : 

And that by Beauvais, which you may 
go if you will. 

For this reason, a great many choose to 
go by Beauvais. 



CHAP. IV. 



" Now, before I quit Calais," a travel- 
writer would say, " it would not be amiss to 
" give some account of it." — 

Now, I think it very much amiss, — that 
a man cannot go quietly through a town 
and let it alone when it does not meddle 
with him, but that he must be turning 
bout, and drawing his pen at every kennel 
he crosses over, merely, o' my conscience, 
for the sake of drawing it; because, if we 
may judge from what has been wrote ot 
these things, by all who have wrote and 
gallop'd, — or who have galloped and wrote, 
which is a different way still; or who, for 
more expedition than the rest, wrote gal- 
loping, — which is the way I do at present, 
— from the great Addison, who did it with 
his satchel of school-books hanging at his 
a — , and galling his beast's crupper at every 
stroke, there is not a galloper of us all, who 
might not have gone on ambling quietly on 
his own ground (in case he had any) and 
have .wrote all he had to write, dry-shod, as 
well as not. 

For my own part, as Heaven is my judge, 
and to which I shall ever make my last ap- 
peal, — I know no more of Calais, (except 
the little my barber told me of it as he was 
whetting his razor) than I do this moment 
of Grand Cairo ; for it was dusky in the 
evening when I landed, and as dark as pitch 
in the morning when I sf t out; and y<t, by 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



203 



merely knowing what is what, and by 
drawing- this from that in one part of the 
town, and In spelling and putting this and 
that together in another, — I would lay any 
travelling odds, that I this moment write a 
chapter upon Calais as long as my arm ; 
and with so distinct and satisfactory a detail 
of every item which is worth a stranger's 
curiosity in the town, — that you would take 
me for the town-clerk of Calais itself; — 
and where, Sir, would be the wonder ! was 
not Democritus, who laughed ten times 
more than I, — town-clerk of Abdera? and 
was not (1 forget his name) who had more 
discretion than us both, town-clerk of Ephe- 
eus ? — It should be penn'd, moreover Sir, 
with so much knowledge, and good sense, 

and truth, and precision, 

—Nay, — if you don't believe me, you 
may read the chapter for your pains. 



great altar is a masterpiece in its kind,— 
'tis of white marble, and, as I was told, 
near sixty feet high: — had it been much 
higher, it had been as high as Mount Cal- 
vary itself; — therefore, I suppose it must 
be high enough in all conscience. 

There was nothing struck me more than 
the great square : though I cannot say 'tis 
either well paved or well built ; but 'tis in 
the heart of the town, and most of the 
streets, especially those in that quarter, a.1 
terminate in it. Could there have been a 
fountain in all Calais, which it seems there 
cannot, as such an object would have been 
a great ornament, it is not to be doubted 
but that the inhabitants would have had it 
in the very centre of this square; — not that 
it is properly a square, — because 'tis forty 
feet longer from east to west, than from 
north to south ; so that the French in gen- 
eral have more reason on their side in call 
ingthem Places than Squares, which, strictly 
speaking, to be sure, they are not. 

The town-house seems to be but a sorry 

building, and not to be kept in the best re- 

Calais, Calatium, Calusium, Calesium. pair; otherwise it had been a second great 

This town, if we may trust its archives, | ornament to this place: it answers, however, 

the authority of which I see no reason to its destination, and serves very well for the 

call in question in this place, — was once no ' reception of the magistrates, who assemble 

more than a small village, belonging to one [ in it from time to time; so that 'tis pre- 



CHAP. V. 



of the first Counts de Guignes, and as it 
boasts at present of no less than fourteen 
thousand inhabitants, exclusive of four hun- 
dred and twenty distinct families in the 
i,asse ville, or suburbs, — it must have grown 
up by little and little, I suppose, to its 
^resent size. 

Though there are four convents, there is 
but one parochial church in the whole 
town. I had not an opportunity of taking 
its exact dimensions, but it is pretty easy 
to make a tolerable conjecture of 'em : — 
for as there are fourteen thousand inhabit- 
ants in the town, if the church holds them 
all, it must be considerably large ; — and if 
it will not, — 'tis a very great pity they 
have not another. — It is built in form of a 
cross, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary ; 
the steeple, which has a spire to it, is placed 
: n the middle of the church, and stands 
upon four pillars, elegant and light enough, 
but sufficiently strong at the same time. — ■ 
It is decorated with eleven altars, most of 
which are rather line than beautiful. The 



sumable, justice is regularly distributed. 

I had heard much of it, but there id 
nothing at all curious in the Courgain : 'tis 
a distinct quarter of the town, inhabited 
solely by sailors and fishermen : it consists 
of a number of small streets, neatly built, 
and mostly of brick. 'Tis extremely popu- 
lous ; but as that may be accounted for from 
the principles of their diet, — there is no- 
thing curious in that neither. — A traveller 
may see it, to satisfy himself: — he must not 
omit however taking notice of La Tour de ' 
Guet, upon any account; 'tis so called from 
its particular destination, because in war it 
serves to discover and give notice of the 
enemies which approach the place, either 
by sea or land ; — but 'tis monstrous high, 
and catches the eye so continually, you 
cannot avoid taking notice of it if vou 
would. 

It was a singular disappointment to me, 
that I could not have permission to take an 
exact survey of the fortifications, which are 
the strongest in the world and whicn. 



201 LIFE AND 

from first to last, that is, from the time they 
were set about by Philip of France, Count 
of Boulogne, to the present war, wherein 
many reparations were made, have cost (as 
I learnt afterwards from an engineer in 
Gascony) — above a hundred millions of 
livres. — It is very remarkable, that at the 
Tete de Gravelenes, and where the town 
is naturally the weakest, they have ex- 
pended the most money ; so that the out- 
works stretch a great way into the cam- 
paign, and consequently occupy a large 
tract of ground. — However, after all that 
is said and done, it must be acknowledged 
that Calais was never upon any account so 
considerable from itself, as from its situa- 
tion, and that easy entrance which it gave 
our ancestors, upon all occasions, into 
France. It was not without its inconve- 
niences also ; being no less troublesome to 
the English, in those times, than Dunkirk 
has been to us, in ours ; so that it was de- 
servedly looked upon as the key to both 
kingdoms; which no doubt is the reason 
that there have arisen so many contentions 
who should keep it : of these, the siege of 
Calais, or rather the blockade (for it was 
shut up both by land and sea) was the most 
memorable, as it withstood the efforts of 
Edward the Third a whole year, and was 
not terminated, at last, but by famine and 
extreme misery; the gallantry of Eustace 
de St. Pierre, who first offered himself a 
victim for his fellow-citizens, has rank'd his 
name with heroes.— As it will not take up 
above fifty pages, it would be injustice to 
the reader, not to give a minute account of 
that romantic transaction, as well as of the 
siege itself, in Rapin's own words : — 



CHAP. VI. 



— But courage ! gentle reader ! — I scorn 
t : — 'tis enough to have thee in my power ; 
— but to make use of the advantage which 
the fortune of the pen has now gained over 
thee, would be too much. — No! — by that 
all-powerful fire which warms the visionary 
brain, and lights the spirits through un- 
worldlv tracts ! ere I would force a helpless 
(.mature udou this hard service, and make 
.lee oay, poor soul ! tor fitly pages, which 



OPINIONS 

I have no right to sell thee, — naked as T 
am, I would browse upon the mountains, 
and smile that the north wind brought mo 
neither my tent nor my supper. 

— So put on, my brave boy ! and make 
the best of thy way to Boulogne. 



CHAP. VII. 

— Boulogne ! — hah ! — so we are all got 

together,— debtors and sinners before Hea- 
ven, a jolly set of us ; — but I can't stay and 
quaff it off with you. — I'm pursued myself 
like a hundred Devils, and shall be over- 
taken before I can well change horses : — 

for Heaven's sake, make haste. 'Tis for 

high treason, quoth a very little man, whis- 
pering as low as he could to a very ta 1 ! 
man that stood next him. — Or else for mui- 
der, quoth the tall man. — Well thrown, 
Size-Ace ! quoth I. — No ; quoth a third, the 

gentleman has been committing 

Ah ! ma cherejille ! said I, as she tripped 
by from her matins, — you look as rosy as 
the morning (for the sun was rising, and it 
made the compliment the more gracious) — 
No ; it can't be that, quoth a fourth — (sho 
made a court'sy to me, — I kiss'd my hand) 
'tis a debt, continued he. — 'Tis certainly for 
debt, quoth a fifth. — I would not pay that 
gentleman's debts, quoth Ace, for a thou- 
sand pound. Nor would I, quoth Size, for 
six times the sum. — Well thrown, Size- 
Ace again ! quoth I ; — but I have no debt 
but the debt of Nature, and I want bui 
patience of her, and I will pay her every 
farthing I owe her. — How can you be so 
hard-hearted, Madam, to arrest a poor trav- 
eller going along, without molestation to 
any one, upon his lawful occasions'? — Do 
stop that death-looking, long-striding scoun- 
drel of a scare sinner, who is posting after 
me. — He never would have followed me 
but for you. If it be but for a stage or two, 
just to give me start of him, I beseech you, 
Madam. — Do, dear lady. — 

Now, in troth, 'tis a great pity, quoth 
mine Irish host, that all this good courtship 
should be lost ; for the young gentlewoman 
has been after going out of hearing of it aU 

' alonor. — 

; Simpleton • quoth I. 



OF TRTS'i \u\ 

So you have nothing 1 else in Boulog:i} 
worth seeing ! — 

— By Jasus ! there is the finest seminary 
for the Humanities. — 

There cannot be a finer, quoth I. 



ANDY. 



20i 



CHAP. VIII. 

When the precipitancy of a man's wishes 
hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than 
the vehicle he rides in, — woe be to truth ! 
and woe be to the vehicle and its tackling 
(let 'em be made of what stuff you will) 
upon which he breathes forth the disap- 
pointment of his soul ! 

As I never give general characters either 
of men or things in choler, " the most haste 
" the worst speed," was all the reflection I 
made upon the affair the first time it hap- 
Den'd ; — the second, third, fourth, and fifth 
time, I confined it respectively to those 
times, and accordingly blamed only the 
second, third, fourth, and fifth post-boy for 
it, without carrying my reflections further ; 
but the event continuing to befall me from 
the fifth to the sixth, seventh, eighth, 
ninth, and tenth time, and without. one ex- 
ception, I then could not avoid making a 
national reflection of it, which I do, in these 
words: — 

That something is always wrong in a 
French post-chaise upon first setting out. 

Or the proposition may stand thus : — 

A French postilion has always to alight 
before he has got three hundred yards out 
d/ toion. 

What's wrong now 1 — Diahle ! — a rope's 
broke ! — a knot has slipt ! — a staple's drawn ! 
•-a bolt's to whittle ! — a tag, a rag, a jagg, 
4 strap, a buckle, or a buckle's tongue, want 
altering. 

Now, true as all this is, I never think 
myself empowered to excommunicate there- 
upon either the post-chaise, or its driver; 
nor do I take it into my head to swear by 
the living G — , I would rather go afoot 
ten thousand times, — or that I will be 
damn'd if ever I get into another ; — but I 
take the matter coolly before me, and con- 
sider, that some tag, or rag, or jagg", or bolt, 
or buckle, or buckle's tongue, will ever be 
tt-wanting, or want altering, travel where 



i will; — so I never chaff, but take the good 
and the bad as they fall in my road, and 
get on. — Do so, my lad ! said I : he hao 
lost five minutes already in alighting, in 
order to get at a luncheon of black bread, 
which he had cramm'd into the chaise- 
pocket, and was remounted, and going 
leisurely on, to relish it the better. — Get 
on, my lad, said I, briskly; — but in the 
most persuasive tone imaginable; for I jin- 
gled a four-and-twenty sous piece against 
the glass, taking care to hold the flat side 
towards him, as he look'd back. The dog 
grinn'd intelligence from his right ear to 
his left; and behind his sooty muzzle dis- 
covered such a pearly row of teeth, that 
sovereignty would have pawn'd her jewels 
for them. 

5 What masticators ! — 
Just Heaven! } Whatbread! _ 

and so, as he finish'd the last mouthful of it, 
we enter'd the town of Montreuil. 



CHAP. IX. 

There is not a town in all France, 
which, in my opinion, ioks better in the 
map than Montreuil. — 1 own, it does not 
look so well in the book of post-roads ; — 
but when you come to see it, — to he sure it 
looks most pitifully. 

There is one thing, however, in it at 
present very handsome; and that is, the 
inn-keeper's daughter. — She has been eigh- 
teen months at Amiens, and six at Paris, 
in going through her classes; so knits, 
and sews, and dances, and does the little 
coquetries very well. 

A slut ! in running them over within 
these five minutes that I have stood looking 
at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops 
in a white thread stocking. — Yes, yes, — I 
see, you cunning gipsy! — 'tis long and 
taper, — you need not pin it to your knee; 
— and that 'tis your own, — and tits you 
exactly. 

That Nature should u «*ve told this c:re«i 
ture a word about a statue s thumb ! 

But as this sample is worth all tneir 

thumbs, — besides, I have her thumbs arm 

fingers in at the bargain, if they can he any 

guide to me, — and as Janatone withal (ftr 

18 



«nfl 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



♦hat ie ler ,,ame) stands so well for a draw- 
ing, — may 1 never draw more; or rather, 
may I draw like a draught-horse, by main 
strength, all the days of my life, — if I do 
not draw her in all her proportions, and 
with as determin'd a pencil, as if I had her 
in the wettest drapery. 

— But your Worships choose rather that 
J give you the length, breadth, and perpen- 
dicular height of the great parish-church, 
or a drawing of the facade of the abbey of 
St. Austreberte, which has been transported 
from Artois hither: — every thing is just I 
suppose as the. masons and carpenters left 
them; — and if the belief in Christ continues 
so long, will be so these fifty years to come; 
— so your Worships and Reverences may 
all measure them at your leisures; — but 
he who measures thee, Janatone, must do 
it now ; — thou carriest the principles of 
change within thy frame; and, considering 
the chances of a transitory life, I would not 
answer for thee a moment: ere twice 
twelve months are pass'd and gone, thou 
mayest grow out like a pumpkin, and lose 
thy shapes : — or, thou mayest go off like a 
flower, and lose thy beauty; — nay, thou 
mayest go o If like a hussy — and lose thy- 
self. — 1 would not answer for my aunt 
Dinah, was she alive ; 'faith, scarce for 
her picture, were it but painted by Rey- 
nolds. — 

But if I go on with my drawing, after 
naming that son of Apollo, I'll be shot. 

So you must e'en be content with the 
original ; which, if the evening is fine in 
passing through Montreuil, you will see at 
your chaise-door, as you change horses : but 
unless you nave as bad a reason for haste 
as I have, — you had better stop. — She has 
a little of the devote ; but that, Sir, is a terce 
to a nine in your favor. 

L — help me ! I could not count a single 
point : so had been piqued, and re-piqued, 
and capotted to the Devil. 



* de Montreuil a Nampont-poste ef o*>mi 
de JSampont a Bernay - poste 
de Bernay a Nouvion - poste 
de Nouvion a Abbeville- poste 

— but the carders and spinners were all 
gone to bed. 



CHAP. XL 



What a vast advantage is travelling! 
only it heats one ; but there is a remedy for 
that, which you may pick out of the next 
chapter. 



CHAP. XII. 



CHAP. X. 



All wnien oeing considered, and tnat 
Death moreover might be much nearer me 
han 1 imagined, — I wish I was at Abbe- 
ville, quoth I, were it only to see how they 
*rd and suui : — so off we set. 



Was I in a condition to stipulate with 
Death, as I am this moment with my apothe- 
cary, how and where I will take his clyster, 
— I should certainly declare against submit- 
ting to it before my friends ; and therefore 
I never seriously think upon the mode and 
manner of this great catastrophe, which 
generally takes up and torments my 
thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself, 
— but I constantly draw the curtain across 
it with this wish, — That the Disnoser of all 
things may so order it, that it happen not 
to me in my own house, — but rather in some 
decent inn ; — at home I know it ; — the con- 
cern of my friends, and the last services of 
wiping my brows and smoothing my pillow, 
which the quivering hand of pale Affection 
shall pay me, will so crucry my soul, that 
I shall die of a distemper which my physi- 
cian is not aware of: but in an inn, the few 
cold offices I wanted, would be purchased 
with a few guineas, and paid me with an 
undisturbed, but punctual attention ; — but. 
mark ; — This inn should not be the inn at 
Abbeville : — if there was not anothei in the 
universe, I would strike that inn out of the> 
capitulation : so 

Let the horses be in the chaise exactly 
by four in the morning. — Yes, by four, Sir, 
—or, by Genevieve ! I'll raise a clatter in 
the house shall wake the dead. 



* Vide Book of French Post-Roads, pag* 3f>, e^Uio» 
of 1702. 



CHAP. XIII. 



* Make them like unto a wheel'" 1 is a 
bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, 
against the grand tour, and that restless 
spirit for making it, which David propheti- 
cally foresaw would haunt the children of 
men in the latter days; and, therefore, as 
thinketh the great Bishop Hall, 'tis one of 
the severest imprecations which David ever 
utter'd against the enemies of the Lord, — 
and, as if he had said, " I wish them no 
" worse luck than always to be rolling 
" about." — So much motion, continues he 
(for he was very corpulent) — is so much 
unquietness; and so much of rest, by the 
same analogy, is so much of Heaven. 

Now, I (being very thin) think differently ; 
and that so much of motion, is so much of 
life, and so much of joy ; — and that to stand 
still, or get on but slowly, is death and the 
devil. 

— Hollo! ho ! — the whole world's asleep ! 
— bring out the horses, — grease the wheels, 
— tie on the mail ; — and drive a nail into 
that moulding, — I'll not lose a moment. — 

Now, the wheel we are talking of, and 
whereinto (but not whereonto, for that would 
make an Ixion's wheel of it) he curseth his 
enemies, according to the bishop's habit 
of body, should certainly be a post-chaise 
wheel, whether they were set up in Pales- 
tine at that time or not; — and my wheel, 
for the contrary reasons, must as certainly 
be a cart-wheel, groaning round its revolu- 
tion once in an age ; and of which sort, 
were I to turn commentator, I should make 
no scruple to affirm, they had great store in 
that hilly country. 

I love the Pythagoreans (much more than 
ever I dare tell my dear Jenny) for their 

" ^opiafxor aire tv Sw/^a7os> as to /caXwj tyiXoaotyciv." 

— [their] "getting out of the body, in order 
** to think well." No man thinks rig-ht 
whilst he is in it ; blinded, as he must be, 
with his congenial humors, and drawn dif- 
ferently aside, as the bishop and myself have 
been, with too lax or too tense a fibre ; — 
Reason is, half of it, Sense ; and the 
measure of Heaven itself is but the mea- 
sure of our present appetites and connex- 
ions. — 

-But which of the two, in the present 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 207 

case, do you think to be mostly in tliE 
wrong 1 

— You, certainly, quoth she, to disTiub » 
whole family so ear*/. 



CHAP. XIV. 

— But she did not know I was under a 
vow not to shave my beard till I got to 
Paris; — yet I hate to make mysteries of 
nothing ; — 'tis the cold cautiousness of one 
of those little souls from which Lessius (lib. 
13. de Moribus Divinis, cap. 24.) hath made 
his estimate, wherein he setteth forth, That 
one Dutch mile, cubically multiplied, will 
allow room enough, and to spare, for eight 
hundred thousand millions, which he sup 
poses to be as great a number of souls 
(counting from the fall of Adam) as car 
possibly be damn'd to the end of the world. 

From what he has made this second esti- 
mate, — unless from the parental goodness 
of God, — I don't know : — I am much more 
at a loss what could be in Franciscus Rib- 
bera's head, who pretends that no less a 
space than one of two hundred Italian miles 
multiplied into itself, will be sufficient to 
hold the like number; — he certainly must 
have gone upon some of the old Roman souls, 
of which he had read, without reflecting 
how much, by a gradual and most tabid de- 
cline, in a course of eighteen hundred years, 
they must unavoidably have shrunk so as 
to have come, when he wrote, almost to 
nothing. 

In Lessius's time, who seems the cooler 
man, they were as little as can be ima- 
gined. — 

— We find them less now ; — 

— And next winter we shall find them 
less again; so that, if we go on from little 
to less, and from le^s to nothing, I hesitate 
not one moment to affirm, that in half <i 
century, at this rate, we shall have no soula 
at all ; which being the period, beyond 
which I doubt likewise of the existence of 
the Christian faith, 'twill be one advantage, 
that both of them will be exactly worn out 
together. 

Blessed Jupiter ! and blessed every othei 
heathen god and goddess ! for now ye will 
come into play again, and witn I'nauus at 



2! 18 LIFE AND 

) our tails. — What jovial times ! — but where 
am II and into what a delicious riot of 
things am I rushing] I — I, who must be cut 
short in the midst of my days, and taste no 
more of 'em than what I borrow from my 
imagination : — Peace to thee, generous 
fool ! and let me go on. 



CHAP. XV. 

-" So hating, I say, to make mysteries 
"of nothing,' 1 '' — I intrusted it with the 
po^t-boy, as soon as ever I got off the stones : 
he gave a crack with his whip to balance 
the compliment; and with the thill-horse 
trotting, had a sort of an up and a down of 
the other, we danced it along to Ailly au 
Ciochers, famed in days of yore for the 
finest chimes in the world ; but we danced 
through it without music, — the chimes be- 
ing greatly out of order — (as in truth they 
were through all France.) 

And so making all possihle speed from 
Ailly au Clochers, I got to Hixcourt ; — 
from Hixcourt, I got to Perquignay ; and 
from Perquignay, I got to Amiens ; 
concerning which town I have nothing to 
inform you, but what I have informed you 
once before, — and that was, that Janatone 
went there to school. 



CHAP. XVI. 

In the whole catalogue of those whiffling 
vexations which come puffing across a 
man's canvas, there is not one of a more 
teasing or tormenting nature than this par- 
ticular one which I am going to describe, — 
and for which (unless you travel with an 
ovance-courier, which numbers do, in order 
to prevent it) there is no help ; and it is 
this : — 

That be you in ever so kindly a propen- 
sity to sleep, — though you are passing per- 
haps through the finest country, upon the 
best roads, and in the easiest carriage for 
doing it in the world ; — nay, were you sure 
you could sleep fifty miles straight-forwards, 
without, once opening your eyes; — nav, 
wuat is more. wa*i you as demonstratively 



OPINIONS 

satisfied as you can be of any trutli m 
Euclid, that you should upon all accounts 
be full as well asleep as awake, — nay, per- 
haps, better ; — yet the incessant returns of 
paying for the horses at every stage, — with 
the necessity thereupon of putting your 
hand into your pocket, and counting out 
from thence three livres fifteen sous (sous 
by sous) puts an end to so much of the 
project, that you cannot execute above six 
miles of it (or, supposing it is a post and 
an half, that is but nine) — were it to save 
your soul from destruction. 

— I'll be even with 'em, quoth I : for I'll 
put the precise sum into a piece of paper, 
and hold it ready in my hand all the way : 
" Now, I shall have nothing to do," said I, 
(composing myself to rest) "but to drop 
" this gently into the post-boy's hat, and not 
" say a word." — Then there wants two sous 
more to drink, — or there is a twelve sous 
piece of Louis XIV. which will not pass, — 
or a livre and some old liards to be brought 
over from the last stage, which Monsieur 
had forgot; which altercations (as a mm 
cannot dispute very well asleep) rouse him : 
still is sweet sleep retrievable; and still 
might the flesh weigh down the spirit, and 
recover itself of these blows; — but then, 
by Heaven! you have paid but a single 
post, — whereas 'tis a post and a half; and 
this obliges you to pull out your book of 
post-roads, the print of which is so very 
small, it forces you to open your eyes, 
whether you will or no : then Monsieur le 
Cure offers you a pinch of snuff, — or a poor 
soldier shows you his leg, — or a shaveling 
his box, — or the priestess of the cistern 
will water your wheels; — (they do not 
want it ; — but she swears by her priesthood 
(throwing it back) that they do) — then you 
have all these points to argue, or consider 
over in your mind ; in doing of which, the 
rational powers get so thoroughly awaken- 
ed, — you may get them to sleep again as 
you can. 

It was entirely owing to one of these 
misfortunes, or I had pass'd clean by the 
stables of Chantilly. — But the postilion first 
affirming, and then persisting in it to my 
lace, that there was no mark upon the two 
sous piece, I open'd my eyes to be con- 
vinced; — and seeing the mark upon it as 
plain as my nose, — T leap'd out of (lie 



chaise in a passion, and so saw every thing 
at Chantilly in spite. — I tried it but for 
three posts and a half, but believe 'tis the 
best principle in the world to travel speed- 
ily upon; for as few objects look very in- 
viting in that mood, — you have little or 
nothing to stop you; by which means it 
wus that I passed through St. Dennis, with- 
>ut turning my head so much as on the 
side towards the Abbey — 

Richness of their treasury! — stuff and 
nonsense ! — Bating their jewels, which are 
all false, I would not give three sous for any 
one thing in it, but Jaidas's lantern ; — nor 
for that neither, only, as it grows dark, it 
mio-ht be of use. 



CHAP. XVII. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 209 

all Paris to turn a wheelbarrow ? In tha 
grandest city of the whole world, it vvouli 
not have been amiss if they had been left a 
thought wider; nay, were it only so much 
in every single street, as that a man mighv 
know (was it only for satisfaction) on which 
side of it he was walking. 

One, — two, — three, — four, — five, — six, 
— seven, — eight, — nine, — ten. — Ten cooks' 
shops ! and twice the number of barbers ! 
and all within three minutes' driving ! one 
would think that all the cooks in the world, 
on some great merry-meeting with the 
barbers, by joint consent, had said, — Come, 
let us all go live at Paris : the French love 
good eating ; — they are all gourmands ; — 
we shall rank high ; if their god is their 
belly, — their cooks must be gentlemen : and, 
forasmuch as the periwig maketh the man, 
and the periwig-maker maketh the periwig, 
— ergo, would the barbers say, we shall 
rank higher still, — we shall be above you 
all, — we shall be * Capitouls at least, — 



Crack, crack, — crack, crack, — crac k 
crack ; — so this is Paris ! quoth I (continn 
mg in the same mood) — and this is Paris ! \pardi ! we shall all wear swords 



— humph ! — Paris ! cried I, repeating the 
name the third time, — 

The first, the finest, the most brilliant! 

The streets, however, are nasty. 

But it looks, I suppose, better than it 
smells. — Crack, crack, — crack, crack; — 
what a fuss thou makest ! — as if it concern- 
ed the good people to be informed, that a 
man with a pale face and clad in black, had the 
honor to be driven into Paris at nine o'clock 
at night, by a postilion in a tawny yellow 
jerkin, turned up with red calamanco! — 
Crack, — crack, crack, — crack, crack. — I 
wish thy whip — 

— But 'tis the spirit of thy nation; so 
crack — crack on. 

Ha ! — and no one gives the wall ! but in 
the School of Urbanity herself, if the walls 
are besh-t — how can you do otherwise 1 

And prithee, when do they light the 
lamps ? • What ! — never in the summer 
months ! — Ho ! 'tis the time of salads. — O 
rare ! salad and soup, — soup and salad, — 
salad and soup, encore — 

— 'Tis too much for sinners. 

Now I cannot bear the barbarity of it. 
How can that unconscionable coachman 
talk so much bawdy to that lean horse ? 
don't you see, friend, the streets are so vil- 
lanously narrow, that there is not room in 
2B 



— And so, one would swear (that is by 
candle-light, — but there is no depending 
upon it) they continue to do to this day. 



CHAP. XVIII. 

The French are certainly misunderstood : 
— but whether the fault is theirs, in not 
sufficiently explaining themselves ; or speak- 
ing with that exact limitation and precision 
which one would expect on a point of such 
importance, and which, moreover, is so 
likely to be contested by us; — or whether 
the fault may not be altogether on our side, 
in not understanding their language al 
ways so critically as to know " what the*' 
" would be at," — I shall not decide : but 'tis 
evident to me, when they affirm, " Tha: 
"they who have seen Paris, have seen every 
" thing" they must mear to speak of those 
who have seen it by day-light. 

As for candle-light, — I give it up; — 1 
have said before, there was no depending 
upon it ; — and I repeat it again ; — but not 
because the lights and shades are too sharp. 
— or the tints confounded, — or that there is 

* Chief Magistrate in Toulouse, &.r 



210 



neither beauty nor keeping, &c. ... for 
that's not truth; — but it is an uncertain 
light in this respect, that in all the five hun- 
dred grand hotels, which they number up 
to you in Paris; — and the five hundred 
good things, at a modest computation (for 
tis only allowing one good thing to a hotel) 
which by candle-light are best to be seen, 
felt, heard, and understood (which, by the 
bye, is a quotation from Lilly) — the devil a 
one of us, out of fifty, can get our heads 
fairly thrust in amongst them. 

This is no part of the French computa- 
tion ; 'tis simply this : — 

That by the last survey, taken in the 
year 1716, since which time there have 
been considerable augmentations, — Paris 
doth contain nine hundred streets, {viz.) 
In the quarter called the City, there are 

fifty-three streets ; 
In St. James of the Shambles, fifty-five 

streets ; 
'In St. Oportune, thirty-four streets; 
In the quarter of the Louvre, twenty-five 

streets ; 
'In the Palace Royal, or St. Honorius, forty- 
nine streets; 
'In Mont Martyr, forty-one streets ; 
In St. Eustace, twenty-nine streets ; 
'In the Halles, twenty-seven streets; 
In St. Dennis, fifty-five streets ; 
In St. Martin, fifty-four streets ; 
In St. Paul, or the Mortellerie, twenty- 
seven streets ; 
Fne Greve, thirty-eight streets; 
. n St. Avoy, or the Verrerie, nineteen 

streets ; 
In the Marias, or the Temple, fifty-two 

streets; 
in St. Anthony, sixty-eight streets; 
In the Place Maubert, eighty-one streets; 
In St. Bennet, sixty streets; 
f n St. Andrew de Arcs, fifty-one streets ; 
'In the quarter of the Luxembourg, sixty- 
two streets ; 
A nd in that of St. Germain, fifty-five streets 
into any of which you may walk; and that 
when you have seen them, with all that 
belongs to them, fairly by day-light, — their 
gates, their bridges, their squares, their 

statues and have crusaded it, more 

ovei, through all their parish-churches, by 

no means omitting St. Roche and Sulpice ; 

- and to crown all, have taken a walk to 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

the four palaces, which you may see, cither 
with or without the statues and pictures, 
just as you choose. 

— Then you have seen — 

— but 'tis what no one needeth to tell 
you, for you will read of it yourself, upon 
the portico of the Louvre, in these words :— 

Earth no such Folks !— no Folks e'er such a tow* 
As Paris is ! — sing Derry, derry, down. 

The French have a gay way of treating 
every thing that is Great ; and that is all 
can be said upon it. 



CHAP. XIX. 

In mentioning the word gay (as in tne 
close of the last chapter) it puts one (t. e. 
an author) in mind of the word spleen ; — 
especially if he has any thing to say upon 
it. Not that by any analysis, — or thai 
from any table of interest or genealogy, 
there appears much more ground of alli- 
ance betwixt them, than betwixt light and 
darkness, or any two of the most unfriendly 
opposites in nature ; — only 'tis an under- 
craft of authors to keep up a good under- 
standing amongst words, as politicians do 
amongst men, — not knowing how near 
they may be under a necessity of placing 
them to each other; — which point being 
now gain'd, and that I may place mine ex- 
actly to my mind, I write it down here, 

SPLEEN. 

This, upon leaving Chantilly, I declared 
to be the best principle in the world to 
travel speedily upon ; but I gave it only aa 
matter of opinion. I still continue in the 
same sentiments ; — only I had riot then ex- 
perience enough of its working to add this, 
That though you do get on at a tearing 
rate, yet you get on but uneasily to your- 
self at the same time ; for which reason, I 
here quit it entirely, and for ever; and 
'tis heartily at any one's service : — it has 
spoiled me the digestion of a good supper, 
and brought on a bilious diarrhoea, which 
has brought me back again to my first 
principle on which I set out; — and with 



is gentem, non urbem pens haVt nllani 
ulla paren. 



which I snail now scamper it away to the 
banks of the Garonne. 

— No ; — I cannot stop a moment to give 
you the character of the people, — their 
genius, — their manners, — their customs, — 
their laws, — their religion, — their govern- 
ment, — their manufactures, — their com- 
merce, — their finances, with all the re- 
sources and hidden springs which sustain 
them; qualified as I may be, by spending 
three days and two nights amongst them, 
and during all that time making these 
things the entire subject of my inquiries 
and reflections. — 

Still, — still I must away, — the roads are 
paved, — the posts are short, — the days are 
long, — 'tis no more than noon, — I shall be 
at Fontainbleau before the King. 

— Was he going there ? Not that I know. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 21 1 

— I might not dissatisfy the other which he 
keeps to himself. 

— My ink burns my finger to try ; and 
when I have, — 'twill have a worse conse- 
quence, — it will burn (I fear) my paper. 

— No ; — I dare not. 

But if you wish to know how the Abbcea 
of Andouillets and a novice of her convent 
got over the difficulty, (only first wishing 
myself all imaginable success) — I'll tell you 
without the least scruple. 



CHAP. XX. 



Now I hate to hear a. person, especially 
if he be a traveller, complain that we do 
not get on so fast in France as we do in 
England ; whereas we get on much faster, 
consideratis considerandis ; thereby always ' 
meaning, that if you weigh their vehicles i vent, principally with the thigh-bone of the 
with the mountains of baggage which you ; man of Lystra, who had been impotent from 
lay both before and behind upon them, — J his youth; then wrapping it up in her veil 
and then consider their puny horses, with when she went to bed ; — then cross-wise 



CHAP. XXI. 

The Abbess of Andouillets, which, if yot. 
look into the large set of provincial maps 
now publishing at Paris, you will find 
situated amongst the hills which divide 
Burgundy from Savoy, being in danger of 
an anchylosis, or stiff joint, (the sinovia of 
her knee becoming hard by long matins) 
and having tried every remedy: — First, 
prayers and thanksgivings; — then invoca- 
tions to all the saints in Heaven, promis- 
cuously ; — then particularly to every saint 
who had ever had a stiff leg before her ; — 
then touching it with all the relios of the con- 



the very little they give them,— 'tis a won- 
der they get on at all. Their suffering is 
most unchristian; and 'tis evident there- 
upon to me, that a French post-horse would 



her rosary ; — then bringing in to her aid tiie 
secular arm, and anointing it with oils and 
hot fat of animals; — then treating it with 
emollient and resolving fomentations; — 



not know what in the world to do, was it I then with poultices of marsh-mallows, mal- 
not for the two words ****** and ******, 'lows, bonus Henricus, white lilies, and fenu- 
in which there is as much sustenance as if greek ; — then taking the woods, I mean the 
you gave them a peck of corn. Now as i smoke of 'em, holding her scapulary across 
these words cost nothing, I long, from my j her lap; — then decoctions of wild chicory, 
soul, to tell the reader what they are; but | water-cresses, chervil, sweet cecilv, and 
here is the question, — they must be told | cochlearia ; and nothing all this white an- 



him plainly, and with the most distinct ar- 
ticulation, or it will answer no end ; — and 
yet to do it in that plain way, — though 



swering, was prevailed on at last to try the 
hot baths of Bourbon: — so having fhst ob- 
tained leave of the visitor-general to take 



their Reverences may laugh at it in the i care of her existence, — she ordered all to 



bed-chamber, — full well I wot, they will 
abuse it in the parlor ; for which cause, I 
have been volving and revolving in my 
fancy some time, but to no purpose, by what 
clean device, or facette contrivance, I might 
*o modulate them, that whilst I satisfy that 
ear which the reader chooses to lend me, 



be got ready for her journey. A novice of 
the convent, of about seventeen, who had 
been troubled with a whitloe in her middle 
finger, by sticking it constantly into the 
Abbess's cast poultices, &c. — had gained 
such an interest, that overlooking a sciatica, 
old nun, who might have been set ud for 



2\% 



LIFE AND 



ever <ty the hot baths of Bourbon, Marga- 
rita, the little novice, was elected as the 
companion of the journey. 

An old calash, belonging to the Abbess, 
lined with green frieze, was ordered to be 
drawn out into the sun. The gardener of 
the convent, being chosen muleteer, led out 
the two old mules, to clip the hair from the 
ruinp-ends of their tails; whilst a couple of 
lay -sisters were busied, the one in darning 
the lining, and the other in sewing on the 
shreds of yellow binding, which the teeth 
of time had unravelled ; — the under-gar- 
dener dressed the muleteer's hat in hot 
wine-lees ; — and a taylor sat musically at 
it, in a shed over-against the convent, in 
assorting four dozen of bells for the harness, 
whistling to each bell as he tied it on with 
a thong. 

— The carpenter and the smith of An- 
douillets held a council of wheels; and by 
seven, the morning after, all look'd spruce, 
and was ready at the gate of the convent 
for the hot baths of Bourbon. — Two rows 
of the unfortunate stood ready there an 
hour before. 

The Abbess of Andouillets, supported by 
Margarita the novice, advanced slowly to 
the calash, both clad in white, with their 
black rosaries hanging at their breasts. 

— There was a simple solemnity in the 
contrast ; they entered the calash ; the nuns 
in the same uniform, sweet emblem of inno- 
cence, each occupied a window, and as the 
Abbess and Margarita look'd up, — each (the 
sciatical poor nun excepted) — each stream'd 
out the end of her veil in the air, — then 
kiss'd the lily hand which let it go. The 
good Abbess and Margarita laid their hands 
saint- wise upon their breasts, — look'd up to 
Heaven, — then to them, — and look'd " God 
" bless you, dear sisters." 

I declare I am interested in this story, 
and wish I had been there. 

The gardener, whom I shall now call the 
muleteer, was a little, hearty, broad-set, 
good-natured, chattering, toping kind of a 
fellow, who troubled his head very little 
with the hows and whens of life ; so had 
rnortgag'd a month of his conventicle wages 
m a borrachio, or leathern cask of wine, 
which he had disposed behind the calash, 
w»th a large russet-colored riding-coa.t over 
it te guard it Irom the sun; and as the 



OPINIONS 

weather was hot, and he not a niggard of 
his labors, walking ten times more than he 
rode, — he found more occasions than those 
of nature, to fall back to the rear of hi 3 
carriage ; till by frequent coming and going 
it had so happen'd, that all his wine had 
leak'd out at the legal vent of the borrachio, 
before one half of the journey was finish'd. 

Man is a creature born to habitudes. The 
day had been sultry, — the evening was de- 
licious, — the wine was generous, — the Bur- 
gundian hill on which it grew was steep, 
— a little tempting bush, over the door of a 
cool cottage, at the foot of it, hung vibrat- 
ing in full harmony with the passions, — a 
gentle air rustled distinctly through the 
leaves, — "Come, — come, — thirsty muleteer, 
— come in." 

— The muleteer was a son of Adam : 1 
need not say one word more. He gave the 
mules, each of 'em, a sound lash, and look- 
ing in the Abbess's and Margarita's faces 
(as he did it) — as much as to say, " here I 
" am," — he gave a second good crack, — aa 
much as to say to his mules, "get on ;" — so 
slinking behind, he enter'd the little inn al 
the foot of the hill. 

The muleteer, as I told you, was a little 
joyous, chirping fellow, who thought not of 
to-morrow, nor of what had gone before, or 
what was to follow it, provided he got but 
his scantling of Burgundy, and a little chit- 
chat along with it ; so entering into a long 
conversation, as how he was chief gardener 
to the convent of Andouillets, &c. &c. and 
out of friendship for the Abbess and Made- 
moiselle Margarita, who was only in her 
noviciate, he had come along with them 
from the confines of Savoy, &c. &c. — and 
as how she had got a white swelling by her 
devotions; and what a nation of herbs he 
had procured to mollify her humors, &c. &c. 
— and that if the waters of Bourbon did not 
mend that leg, — she might as well be lame 
of both, &c. &c. &c— He so contrived his 
story, as absolutely to forget the heroine of 
it, — and with her the little novice ; and what 
was a more ticklish point to be forgot than 
both, — the two mules; who being creatures 
that take advantage of the world, inasmuch 
as their parents took it of them, — and they 
not being in a condition to return the obli- 
gation downwards (as men, and women, 
and beasts are) — they do it side-ways, and 



OF TRISTRA 

long-ways, and hack-ways, — and up hi 
and down hill, and which way they can. — 
Philosophers, with all their ethics, have 
never considered this rightly: — how should 
the poor muleteer, then, in his cups, con 
sider it at all ! He did not in the least ; — 
'tis time we do. Let us leave him then in 
the vortex of his element, the happiest and 
most thoughtless of mortal men, — and for 
a moment let us look after the mules, the 
Abbess, and Margarita. 

By virtue of the muleteer's two last 
strokes, the mules had gone quietly on, fol 
lowing their own consciences up the hill, 
till they had conquer'd about one half of it; 
when the elder of them, a shrewd crafty 
old devil, at the turn of an angle, giving a 
side-glance and no muleteer behind them, 

By my fig ! said she, swearing, I'll go no 
further. — And if I do, replied the other, 
they shall make a drum of my hide. 

— And so, with one consent, they stopp'd 
thus : — 



CHAP, XXII. 

— Get on with you, said the Abbess. 

— Wh ysh, — ysh, — ysh, — cried 

Margarita. 
— Sh — a, — shu - u, — shu - u, — sh - - aw, 

— shaw'd the Abbess. 

— Whu — v — w, — whew — w — w, — 
whuv'd Margarita, pursing up her sweet 
lips betwixt a hoot and a whistle. 

Thump, — thump, — thump, — obstrepe- 
rated the Abbess of Andouillets, with the 
end of her gold-headed cane against the 
bottom of the calash. 

-The old mule let a f— 



CHAP. XXIII. 

We are ruin'd and undone, my child, said 
the Abbess to Margarita; — we shall be 
here all night: — we shall be plunder'd, — 
we shall be ravish'd ! 

We shall be ravish'd, said Margarita, as 
»ure as a gun. 

— Sancta Maria ! cried the Abbess (for- 
getting the O !) — why was I govern'd by 



M SHANDY. 213 

this wicked stiff joint? why did I leave the 
convent of Andouillets ! and why didst thou 
not suffer thy servant to go unpolluted to 
her tomb 7 — 

O my finger ! my finger ! cried the nov 
ice, catching fire at the word scrvant,- 
why was I not content to put it here, or 
there ? anywhere, rather than be in this 
strait 1 

— Strait ! said the Abbess. 

— Strait ! said the novice ; for terror had 
struck their understandings, — the one knew 
not what she said, — the other what she 
answer'd. 

— O my virginity ! virginity ! cried the 
Abbess. 

— inity ! — inity ! said the novice, sobbing. 



CHAP. XXIV. 

My dear mother, quoth the novice, com 
ing a little to herself, — there are two cer- 
tain words, which I have been told will 
force any horse, or ass, or mule, to go up a 
hill whether he will or not: be he ever so 
obstinate or ill-will'd, the moment he hears 
them uttered, he obeys. — They are words 
magic ! cried the Abbess, in the utmost 
horror. — No, replied Margarita, calmly, 
but they are words sinful — What are they ! 
quoth the Abbess, interrupting her. — They 
are sinful in the first degree, answered 
Margarita ; — they are mortal ; — and if we 
are ravish'd and die unabsolv'd of them, we 
shall both — But you may pronounce them 
to me, quoth the Abbess of Andouillets. — 
They cannot, my dear mother, said the 
novice, be pronounced at all ; they will 
make all the blood in one's body fly up into 
one's face. — But you may whisper them m 
my ear, quoth the Abbess. 

Heaven ! hadst thou no guardian angel 
to delegate to the inn at the bottom of the 
hill ! Was there no generous and friendly 
spirit unemployed ! — no agent in nature, 
by some monitory shivering creeping along 
the artery which led to his heart, to rouse; 
the muleteer from his banquet] — no sweet 
minstrelsy to bring back the fair idea of the 
Abbess and Margarita, with their black 
rosaries 1 

Rouse! rouse! — but 'Us too late; — the 



214 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



horrid words a e pronounced this moment, 
— and how to tell laom, — Ye, who can speak 
of every thing existing- with unpolluted 
lips, — instruct me, — guide me! 



CHAP. XXV. 

All sins whatever, quoth the Abbess, 
turning casuist in the distress they were 
under, are held by the confessor of our con- 
vent to be either mortal or venial : there 
is no further division. — Now, a venial sin 
being the slightest and least of all sins, — 
being halved, — by taking either only the 
half of it, and leaving the rest, — or, by tak- 
ing it all, and amicably halving it betwixt 
yourself and another person, — in course 
becomes diluted into no sin at all. 

Now I see no sin in saying bou, bou, bou, 
bou, bou, a hundred times together ; nor is 
there any turpitude in pronouncing the 
syllable ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, were it 
from our matins to our vespers. — There- 
fore, my dear daughter, continued the Ab- 
bess of Andouillets, — I will say bou, and 
thou shalt say ger; and then alternately, as 
there is no more sin in fou than in bou ; — 
tiiou shalt say fou, — and I will come in 
(like fa, sol, la, re, mi, ut, at our complines) 
with ter: — and accordingly .ne Abbess, 
giving the pitch-note, set off thus : 
Abbess, ) Bou - - bou - - bou - - 

Margarita, S ger, - - ger, - - ger. 

Margarita, > Fou - - fou - - fou - - 
Abbess, > ter, - - ter, - - ter. 

The two mules acknowledged the notes 
by a mutual lash of their tails; but it went 
no further. — 'Twill answer by and by, said 
the novice. — 

Abbess, ) Bou- bou- bou- bou- bou- bou- 

Margar i ta, S —ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, ger. 

Quicker still, cried Margarita. 

Fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, 
ton. 

Quicker still, cried Margarita. 

Bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, 
l»ou. 

Quicker still. — God preserve me, said 
I tic Abbess. — They do not understand us, 
cried Margarita. — But the Devil does, said 
»ne Abbess ot Andouillets. 



CHAP. XXVI. 

What a tract of country have I run ?— 
how many degrees nearer to the warm sun 
am I advanced, and how many fair and 
goodly cities have I seen, during the time 
you have been reading and reflecting, 
Madam, upon this story ! — There's Fontain- 
bleau, and Sens, and Joigny, and Auxerre, 
and Dijon the capital of Burgundy, and 
Challon, and Macon the capital of the Ma- 
conese, and a score more upon the road to 
Lyons ; — and now I have run them over,- - 
I might as well talk to you of so many 
market-towns in the moon, as tell you one 
word about them : it will be this chapter at 
the least, if not both this and the next en- 
tirely lost, do what I will. — 

Why, 'tis a strange story ! Tristram. 

— Alas! Madam, 
had it been upon some melancholy lecture 
of the cross, — the peace of meekness, or 
the contentment of resignation, — I had not 
been incommoded; or had I thought of 
writing it upon the purer abstractions of 
the soul, and that the food of wisdom, and 
holiness, and contemplation, upon which 
the spirit of man (when separated from the 
body) is to subsist for ever, — you would 
have come with a better appetite from it. 

I wish I never had wrote it: but as I 
never blot any thing out, — let us use some 
honest means to get it out of our heads 
directly. 

Pray reach me my fool's cap: — I fear you 
sit upon it, Madam ; — 'tis under the cushion : 
— I'll put it on. — 

Bless me! you have had it upon your 
head this half hour. — There then let it 
stav, with a 

Fa-ra diddle di 

and a fa-ri diddle d 

and a high-dum, — dye-dum 

fiddle dum - c. 

And now, madam, we may venture, I hopfv 
a little to go on. 



CHAP. XXVII. 

All you need say of Fontainbleau (in 
case you are ask'd,) is, that it stands about 
ibrtv miles (south something) from Paris, 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 215 

in the middle of a large forest: — that there I and opiniatry, — they were of so odd, so 
is something great in it: — that the King imix'd and tragi-comical a contexture, — that 
goes there once every two or three years, | the whole put together, it appears of so dii- 
with his whole court, for the pleasure of I ferent a shade and tint from any tour in 



the chase ; and that, during that carnival of 
sporting, an English gentleman of fashion 
(you need not forget yourself) may be ac- 
commodated with a nag or two, to partake 
of the sport, taking care only not to out- 
gallop the King — 

Though there are two reasons why you 
need not talk loud of this to every one. 

First, Because 'twill make the said nags 
the harder to be got ; and, 

Secondly, 'Tis not a word of it true. — 
Allons ! 

As for Sens, you may dispatch it in a 
word ; — "'Tis an archiepiscopal see." 

For Joigny, — the less, I think, one says 
of it, the better. 

But for Auxerre, I could go on for ever: 
for in my grand tour through Europe, in 
which, after all, my father (not caring to 
trust me with any one) attended me him- 
self, with my uncle Toby, and Trim, and 
Obadiah, and indeed most of the family, 
except my mother, who being taken up 
with a project of knitting my father a pair 
of large worsted breeches — (the thing is 
common sense) — and she not caring to be 
put out of her way, she staid at home, at 
Shandy-hall, to keep things right during 
the expedition ; in which, I say, my father 
stopping us two days at Auxerre, and his 
researches being ever of such a nature, 
that they would have found fruit even in a 
desert, — he has left me enough to say upon 
Auxerre. In short, wherever my father 
went; — but 'twas more remarkably so in 
this journey through France and Italy, than 
in any other stages of his life ; — his road 
eeemed to lie so much on one side of that, 
wherein all other travellers have gone be- 
fore him, — he saw Kings, and courts, and 
silks of all colors, in such strange lights ; 
— and his remarks, and reasonings upon 
the characters, the manners, and customs 
of the countries we pass'd over, were so 
opposite to those of all other mortal men, 
particularly those of my uncle Toby and 
Trim — (to say nothing of myself;) — and to 
crown all, — the occurrences and scrapes 
which we were perpetually meeting and 
g-eUing into, in consequence of his systems 



Europe, which was ever executed, — that 1 
will venture to pronounce, — the fault must 
be mine, and mine only, — it it be not read 
by all travellers and travel-readers, till trav- 
elling is no more, — or, which comes to the 
same point, — till the world, finally, takes it 
into its head to stand still. 

But this rich bale is not to be opened 
now, except a small thread or two of »«« 
merely to unravel the mystery of my father's 
stay at Auxerre. 

As I have mentioned it, — 'tis too slight 
to be kept suspended ; and when 'tis wovo 
in, there is an end of it. — 

We'll go, brother Toby, said my father 
whilst dinner is coddling, — to the abbey of 
Saint Germain, if it be only to see these 
bodies, of which Monsieur Sequier has 
given such a recommendation. — I'll go see 
any body, quoth my uncle Toby ; for he 
was all compliance through every step of 
the journey. — Defend me ! said my father 
— they are all mummies. — Then one 'need 
not shave, quoth my uncle Toby. — Shave ! 
no, — cried my father, — 'twill be more like 
relations to go with our beards on. — So out 
we sallied, the Corporal lending his master 
his arm, and bringing up the rear, to the 
abbey of St. Germain. — 

Every thing is very fine, and very rich, 
and very superb, and very magnificent, said 
my father, addressing himself to the sacris- 
tan, who was a younger brother of the order 
of Benedictines ; — but our curiosity has led 
us to see the bodies, of which Monsieur 
Sequier has given the world so exact a 
description. — The sacristan made a bow, 
and lighting a torch first, which he had al- 
ways in the vestry ready for the purpose, 
he led us into the tomb of St. Hcribald. — 
This, said the sacristan, laying his hand 
upon the tomb, was a renown'd prince of 
the house of Bavaria, who, under the suc- 
cessive reigns of Charlemagne, Louis le 
Debonnair, and Charles the Bald, oore a 
great sway in the government, and had a 
principal hand in bringing every thing into 
order and discipline. — 

Then he has been as great, said my un- 
cle, in the field as in the cabinet — F .^are 



216 



say he has been a gallant soldier. — He was 
a rnon.i, — said the sacristan. — 

My uncle T:>by and Trim sought com- 
fort in each other's faces, — but found it not. 
— My father clapp'd both his hands upon 
his cod-piece, which was a way he had 
when any thing hugely tickled him : for 
though he hated a monk, and the very smell 
of a monk, worse than all the Devils in 
hell, — yet, the shot hitting my uncle Toby 
and Trim so much harder than him, 'twas 
a relative triumph, and put him into the 
gayest humor in the world. — 

And pray what do you call this gentle- 
man '? quoth my father, rather sportingly. — 
This tomb, said the young Benedictine, 
looking downwards, contains the bones of 
St. Maxima, who came from Ravenna on 
purpose to touch the body 

Of St. Maximus, said my father, popping 
in with his saint before him, — they were 
two of the greatest saints in the whole 
martyrology, added my father. — Excuse me, 
said the sacristan, — 'twas to touch the 
bones of St. Germain, the builder of the 
abbey. — And what did she get by it! said 
my uncle Toby. — What does any woman 
get by it ? said my father. — Martyrdom, re- 
plied the young Benedictine, making a bow 
down to the ground, and uttering the word 
with so humble but decisive a cadence, it 
disarmed my father for a moment. — 'Tis 
supposed, continued the Benedictine, that 
St. Maxima has lain in this tomb four hun- 
dred years, and two hundred before her 
canonization. — 'Tis but a slow rise, brother 
Toby, (moth my father, in this self-same 
army of martyrs. — A desperate slow one, 
an' please your Honor, said Trim, unless 
one could purchase. — I should rather sell 
out entirely, quoth my uncle Toby. — I am 
pretty much of your opinion, brother Toby, 
said my father. — 

Poor St. Maxima! said my uncle Toby, 
'ow to himself, as we turn'd from the tomb. 
— She was one of the fairest and most beau- 
tiful ladies either of Italy or France, con- 
tinued the sacristan. — But who the deuce 
has got lain down here, beside her ] quoth 
my father, pointing with his cane to a large 
tomb as we walked on. — It is Saint Optat, 
Sir, answered the sacristan. — And properly 
is S?int Optat placed ! said my father; and 
wnac is Saint Optat's story? continued he. 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

Saint Optat, repliea the sacristan, was 3 



bishop. — 

— I thought so, by Heaven ! cried my 
father, interrupting him; — Saint Optat! — 
how should Saint Optat fail 1 — So snatching 
out his pocket-book, and the young Bene- 
dictine holding him the torch as he wrole. 
he set it down as a new prop to his system 
of Christian names: and I will be bold to 
say, so disinterested was he in the search 
of truth, that, had he found a treasure in 
Saint Optat's tomb, it would not have made 
him half so rich ; 'twas as successful a short 
visit as ever was paid to the dead ; and so 
highly was his fancy pleased with all that 
had passed in it, that he determined at once 
to stay another day in Auxerre. 

— I'll see the rest of these good gentry 
to-morrow, said my father, as we crossed 
over the square. — And while you are pay- 
ing that visit, brother Shandy, quoth my 
uncle Toby, the Corporal and I will mount 
the ramparts. 



CHAP. XXVIII 

— Now this is the most puzzled skein of 
all ; — for in this last chapter, as far as it has 
help'd me through Auxerre, I have been 
getting forwards in two different journeys 
together, and with the same dash of the 
pen ; — for I have got entirely out of Auxerre 
in this journey which I am writing now, 
and I am got half-way out of Auxerre in 
that which I shall write hereafter. — There 
is but a certain degree of perfection in 
everv thing ; and, by pushing at something 
beyond that, I have brought myself into 
such a situation, as no traveller ever stood 
before me; for I am this moment walking 
across the market-place of Auxerre, with 
my father and my uncle Toby, in our way 
back to dinner; — and I am this moment 
also entering Lyons, with my post-chaise 
broke into a thousand pieces : — and I am, 
moreover, this moment in a handsome pa- 
vilion, built by Pringello,* upon the banks 
of the Garonne, which Mons. Sligniac has 



* The famous Don Pringello, the celebrated Spanish 
architect, of whom my cousin Anthony has mad© 
such honorable mention, in a scholium to the Tale 
inscribed to his name. — Vid. p. 129, siulJ Mi! 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

lent me, and where I now sit rhapsodizing 
all these affairs. 

— Let me collect myself, and pursue my 
journey. 



21? 



chap. xxix. 

I am glad of it, said I, settling 1 the ac- 
count with myself, as I walk'd into Lyons, — 
my chaise being all laid higgledy-piggledy 
with my baggage in a cart, which was 
moving slowly before me. — I am heartily 
glad, said I, that 'tis all broke to pieces; for 
now I can go directly by water to Avignon, 
which will carry me on a hundred and 
twenty miles of my journey, and not cost 
me seven livres ; — and from thence, con- 
tinued I, bringing forwards the accounts, I 
can hire a couple of mules, — or asses, if I 
like (for nobody knows me) and cross the 
plains of Languedoc for almost nothing: 
— I shall gain four hundred livres by the 
misfortune clear into my purse ; and pleas- 
ure ! worth, — worth double the money, by 
it. With what velocity, continued I, clapping 
my two hands together, shall I fly down the 
rapid Rhone, with the Vivares on my right 
hand, and Dauphiny on my left, scarce 
seeing the ancient cities of Vienne, Valence, 
and Vivieres ! What a flame will it rekindle 
in the lamp, to snatch a blushing grape 
from the Hermitage and Cote Roti, as I 
shoot by the foot of them ! and what a fresh 
spring in the blood ! to behold upon the 
banks, advancing and retiring, the castles 
of romance, whence courteous knights have 
whilom rescued the distress'd; — and see, 
vertiginous, the rocks, the mountains, the 
cataracts, and all the hurry which Nature 
is in with all her great works about her ! 

As I went on thus, methought my chaise, 
the wreck of which look'd stately enough 
at the tirst, insensibly grew less and less in 
its size ; the freshness of the painting was 
no more, — the gilding lost its lustre, — and 
the whole affair appeared so poor in my 
eyes! — so sorry! — so contemptible! — and, 
•\n a word, so much worse than the Abbess 
of x\ndouillet's itself, — that I was just open- 
ing my mouth to give it to the Devil, — 
wi.en a pert, vamping chaise-undertaker, 
otepping nimbly across thcs street, demand- 
s' C 



ed if Monsieur would have his chaise re- 
fitted. — No, no, said I, shaking my heac- 
sideways. — Would Monsieur choose to sel 
it? rejoined the undertaker. — With all my 
soul, said I ; — the iron-work is worth forty 
livres, — and the glasses worth forty more, 
— and the leather you may take to live on. 

— What a mine of wealth, quolh I, as 
he counted me the money, has this post- 
chaise brought me in ! And this is my usual 
method of book-keeping, at least with the 
disasters of life, — making a penny of every 
one of 'em as they happen to me. 

— Do, my dear Jenny, tell the world for 
me how I behaved under one, the most op- 
pressive of its kind, which could befall me 
as a man, proud as he ought to be of his 
manhood. 

'Tis enough, saidst thou, coming close 
up to me, as I stood with my garters in my 
hand, reflecting upon what had not passed, 
— 'Tis enough, Tristram, and I am satis- 
fied, saidst thou, whispering these words in 
my ear, ***** * 

* * * • * * * * 

— any other man would have sunk down to 
the centre. 

— Every thing is good for something, 
quoth I. 

— I'll go into Wales for six weeks, and 
drink goat's whey, — and I'll gain seven 
years longer life for the accident. For 
which reason I think myself inexcusable 
for blaming Fortune so often as I have done, 
for pelting me all my life long, like an un 
gracious duchess, as I call'd her, with so 
many small evils. Surely, if I have any 
cause to be angry with her, 'tis that she 
has not sent me great ones: — a score of 
good cursed, bouncing losses, would have 
been as good as a pension to me. 

— One of a hundred a year, or so, is all 
I wish : — I would not be at the plague of 
paying land-tax for a larger 



CHAP. XXX. 

To those who call vexations, vexation*, 
as knowing what they are, there could not 
be a greater, than to be the best part of « 
day at Lyons, the most opulent and flour- 
ishing city in France, enriched w>ib 'ha 
19 



218 

most fragments of antiquity, — and not be 
able to see it. To be withheld upon any 
account, must be a vexation ; but to be 
withheld by a vexation, — must certainly be 
what philosophy justly calls 

VEXATION 

upon 
VEXATION. 

I had got my two dishes of milk-coffee 
(which, by the bye, is excellently good for 
a consumption ; but you must boil the milk 
and coffee together, — otherwise 'tis only 
coffee and milk) — and as it was no more 
than eight in the morning, and the boat did 
not go off till noon, I had time to see enough 
of Lyons to tire the patience of all the 
friends I had in the world with it. I will 
take a walk to the cathedral, said I, looking 
at my list, and see the wonderful mechan- 
ism of this great clock of Lippius of Basil, 
in the first place. 

Now, of all things in the world, I under- 
stand the least of mechanism ; — I have 
neither genius, or taste, or fancy, — and have 
a brain so entirely unapt for every thing of 
that kind, that I solemnly declare I was 
never yet able to comprehend the principles 
of motion of a squirrel-cage, or a common 
knife-grinder's wheel, — though I have many 
an hour of my life look'd up with great de- 
votion at the one, — and stood by with as 
much patience as any christian ever could 
do at the other. 

I'll go see the surprising movements of 
this great clock, said I, the very first thing 
I do: and then I will pay a visit to the 
great library of the Jesuits, and procure, if 
possible, a sight of the thirty volumes of 
the general history of China, wrote (not in 
the Tartarian, but) in the Chinese language, 
and in the Chinese character too. 

Now, I almost know as little of the Chi- 
nese language, as I do of the mechanism 
of Lippius's clock-work: so, why these 
should have jostled themselves into the two 
first articles of my list, — I leave to the cu- 
rious as a problem of Nature. I own, it 
looks like one of her ladyship's obliquities; 
and they who court her, are interested in 
Ending out her humor as much as I. 

When these curiosities are seen, quoth I, 
ialf addressing myself to my valet de 
place, who stood behind me, — 'twill be no 
li'irt if we go to the church of St. Irena?us, 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

and see the pillar to which Christ was tied, 
— and, after that, the house where Pontiu9 
Pilate lived. — 'Twas at the next, town, said 
the valet de place, at Vienne. — I am glad 
of it, said I, rising briskly from my chair, 
and walking across the room with strides 
twice as long as my usual pace ; — " for so 
much the sooner shall I be at the Tomb 
" of the Two Lovers." 

What was the cause of this movement, 
and why I took such long strides in uttering 
this, — I might leave to the curious too; 
but, as no principle of clock-work is con- 
cerned in it, — 'twill be as well for the 
reader if I explain it myself. 



CHAP. XXXI. 

O ! there is a sweet era in the life of 
man, when (the brain being tender and 
fibrillous, and more like pap than any thing 
else) — a story read of two fond lovers, 
separated from each other by cruel parents, 
and by still more cruel destiny — 

Am and us — He, 

Amanda — She, — 
each ignorant of the other's course , 

He — east, 

She — west : 
Amandus taken captive by the Turks, and 
carried to the Emperor of Morocco's court, 
where the Princess of Morocco, falling in 
love with him, keeps him twenty years in 
prison for the love of his Amanda. 

She (Amanda) all the time wandering 
barefoot, and with dishevell'd hair, o'er 
rocks and n.ountains, inquiring for Aman- 
dus! — Amandus! Amandus ! — making every 
hill and valley to echo back his name — 

Amandus! Amandus! 
at every town and city, sitting down forlorn 
at the gate: — Has Amandus! — has my 
Amandus enter'd ! — till, — going round, and 
round, and round the world, — chance unex- 
pectedly bringing them at the same moment 
of the night, though by different wajs, to 
the gate of Lyons, their native city, and 
each in well-known accents calling out 
aloud, 

Is Amandus ) 



Is mv Amanda < 



still alivt 1 



they fly into each other's arms, and both 
drop down dead for joy. 

There is a soft era in every gentle mor- 
tal's life, where such a story affords more 
pabulum to the brain than all the Frusts, 
and Crusts, and Rusts of antiquity, which 
travellers can cook up for it. 

— 'Twas all that stuck on the right side 
of the cullender in my own, of what Spon 
and others, in their accounts of Lyons, had 
strained into it ; and finding, moreover, in 
some Itinerary, but in what, God knows, — 
that, sacred to the fidelity of Amandus and 
Amanda, a tomb was built without the 
gates, where, to this hour* lovers called 
upon them to attest their truths, — I never 
could get into a scrape of that kind in my 
life, but this tomb of the lovers would, 
somehow or other, come in at the close ; 
nay, such a kind of empire had it estab- 
lish'd over me, that I could seldom think or 
speak of Lyons; — and sometimes, not so 
much as see even a Lyons-waistcoat, but 
this remnant of antiquity would present it- 
self to my fancy ; and I have often said in 
my wild way of running on, — though I fear 
with some irreverence, — "I thought this 
shrine (neglected as it was) as valuable as 
that of Mecca, and so little short, except in 
wealth, of the Santa Casa itself, that, 
some time or other, I would go a pilgrimage 
(though I had no other business at Lyons) 
on purpose to pay it a visit." 

In my list, therefore, of Videnda at Ly- 
ons, this, though last, — was not, you see, 
least ; so taking a dozen or two of longer 
strides than usual across my room, just 
while it passed my brain, I walked down 
calmly into the Basse Cour, in order to 
sally forth ; and, having called for my bill, 
— as it was uncertain whether I should re- 
turn to my inn, I had paid it, — and, more- 
over, given the maid ten sous, and was just 
receiving the dernier compliments of Mon- 
sieur Le Blanc, for a pleasant voyage down 
the Rhone, — when I was stopp'd at the 
gate 



CHAP. XXXII. 



'Twas by a poor ass, who had just turned 
in with a couple of large panniers upon his 
back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 219 

and cabbage-leaves; and stood dubious with 
his two fore-feet on the inside of the thinmh- 
old, and with his two hinder-foot f owards 
the street, as not knowing very well whethe* 
he was to go in or no. 

Now, 'tis an animal (be in what horsy ' 
may) I cannot bear to strike: — there is a 
patient endurance of sufferings, wrote so 
unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, 
which pleads so mightily for him, that it 
always disarms me; and to that degree, 
that I do not like to speak unkindly to him : 
on the contrary, meet him where I will, 
whether in town or country, — in cart, or 
under panniers, — whether in liberty or 
bondage, — I have ever something civil to 
say to him on my part ; and as one word 
begets another (if he has as little to do as I) 
— I generally fall into conversation with 
him ; and surely never is my imagination 
so busy as in framing his responses from 
the etchings of his countenance, and where 
those carry me not deep enough, — in flying 
from my own heart into his, and seeing 
what is natural for an ass to think, — as well 
as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, it 
is the only creature of all the classes of 
beings below me, with whom I can do this ; 
— for parrots, jackdaws, &c. I never ex- 
change a word with them, — nor with apes, 
&c. for pretty near the same reason ; they 
act by rote, as the others speak by it, and 
equally make me silent : nay, my dog and 
my cat, though I value them both — (and, 
for my dog, he would speak if he could) — 
yet, somehow or other, they neither of them 
possess the talents for conversation ; — I can 
make nothing of a discourse with them be- 
yond the proposition, the reply, and rejoin- 
der, which terminated my father's and my 
mother's conversation in his beds of justice ; 
— and those utter'd, — there's an end of the 
dialogue. 

— But with an ass, I can commune for 
ever. 

— Come, Honesty ! said I,- seeing it was 
impracticable to pass betwixt him and the 
gate, — art thou for coming in or going out l 

— The ass twisted his head round, to look 
up the street. 

— Well, replied I, we'll wait a minute for 
thy driver. 

— He turned his head thoughtful aboui, 
and looked wistfullv the ouuosite wav 



220 



1 understand thee perfectly, answered T: I 
— if thou takest a wrong 1 step in this affair, 
he will cudgel thee to death. — Well, a 
minute is but a minute, and, if it saves a 
fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be 
Bet down as ill spent. 

He was eating the stem of an artichoke 
as this discourse went on, and, in the little 
ueevish contentions of nature betwixt hun- 
ger and unsavoriness, had dropt it out of 
his mouth half a dozen times, and pick'd it 
up again. — God help thee, Jack ! said I, thou 
hast a bitter breakfast on't, — and many a 
bitter day's iabor, — and many a bitter blow, 
I fear, for its wages! — 'tis all — all bitter- 
ness to thee, whatever life is to others! — 
And now, thy mouth, if one knew the truth 
of it, is as bitter, I dare say, as soot — (for he 
had cast aside the stem) and thou hast not a 
friend, perhaps, in all this world, that will 
give thee a macaroon. — In saying this, I 
pull'd out a paper of 'em, which I had just 
purchased, and gave him one, — and, at this 
moment that I am telling it, my heart smites 
me, that there was more of pleasantry in 
the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat 
a macaroon, — than of benevolence in giving 
him one, which presided in the act. 

When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I 
press'd him to come in ; — the poor beast 
was heavy loaded, — his legs seemed to 
tremble under him, — he hung rather back- 
wards ; and, as I pull'd at his halter, it broke 
short in my hand. — He look'd up pensive 
in my face — " Don't thrash me with it ; — 
but, if you will, you may." — " If I do," said 
I, " I'll be d d." 

The word was but one half of it pro- 
nounced, like the Abbess of Andouillets' — 
(so there was no sin in it) — when a person 
coming in, let fall a thundering bastinado 
upon the poor devil's crupper, which put an 
end to the ceremony. 

Out upon it ! 
cried I; — but the interjection was equivo- 
cal, and, I think, wrong placed too, — for the 
end o r an osier which had started out from 
Ihe contexture of the ass's pannier, had 
caught hold of my breeches-pocket as he 
-usli'd by me, and rent it in the most disas- 
.rous direction you can imagine; — so that 
.he 

Out upon it ! in my opinion, should have 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

come in here; — but this I leave to be set- 



tled by 

THE 

REVIEWERS 

OF 

MY BREECHES, 

which I have brought over along witn 
for that purpose. 



CHAP. XXXIII. 

When all was set to rights, I came down 
stairs again into the Basse Cour with my 
valet de place, in order to sally out towards 
the tomb of the two lovers, &c. — and was a 
second time stopp'd at the gate ; — not by 
the ass, — but by the person who struck him ; 
and who, by that time, had taken possession 
(as is not uncommon after a defeat) of the 
very spot of ground where the ass stood. 

It was a commissary sent to me from the 
post-office, with a rescript in his hand, for 
the payment of some six livres odd sous. 

Upon what account ? said I. — 'Tis upon 
the part of the King, replied the commis- 
sary, heaving up both his shoulders. 

— My good friend, quoth I, — as sure as 1 
am I, — and you are you, — 

— And who are you ] said he, 

— Don't puzzle me, said I. 



CHAP. XXXVII. 

— But it is an indubitable verity, contin- 
ued I, addressing myself to the commissary, 
changing only the form of my asseveration, 
— that I owe the King of France nothing 
but my good-will ; for he is a very honest 
man, and I wish him all health and pastime 
in the world. 

Pardonnez moi, — replied the commissa- 
ry ; you are indebted to him six livres four 
sous for the next post from hence to St. Fons, 
in your route to Avignon ; — which being a 
post royal, you pay double for the horses 
and postilion — otherwise, 'twould have 
amounted to no more than three livres two 
sc us. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



22 1 



-But 1 don't go by land, said I. 
-You may, if you please, replied the 
commissary. 

— Your most obedient servant, — said I, 
making him a low bow. 

The commissary, with all the sincerity 
of grave good breeding-, — made me one as 
low again, — I never was more disconcerted 
with a bow in my life. 

— The Devil take the serious character 
of these people ! quoth I — (aside) — they 
understand no more of irony than this — 

The comparison was standing close by 
with his panniers, — but something sealed 
up my lips; — I could not pronounce the 
name. 

— Sir, said I, collecting myself, — it is not 
piy intention to take post. 

— But you may, — said he, persisting in 
his first reply ; — you may take post, if you 
choose. 

— And I may take salt to my pickled 
herring, said I, if I choose. 

— But I do not choose. 

— But you must pay for it, whether you 
do or no. 

— Ay ! for the salt, said I (T know). 

— And for the post too, added he. — De- 
fend me ! cried I. 

— I travel by water ; — I am going down 
the Rhone this very afternoon ; — my bag- 
gage is in the boat, — and I have actually 
paid nine livres for my passage. 

Cest tout egal, — 'tis all one, said he. 

— Bon Dieu ! what, pay for the way I 
go ! and for the way I do not go ! 

(Test Unit egal, replied the commissary. 

—The Devil it is! said I;— but I will 
go to ten thousand Bastiles first. 

O England ! England ! thou land of liberty, 
and climate of good sense! thou tenderest 
of mothers, and gentlest of nurses ! cried I, 
kneeling upon one knee as I was beginning 
my apostrophe, — 

When the director of Madame Le Blanc's 
conscience coining in at that instant, and 
seeing a person in black, with a face as pale 
as ashes, at his devotions, — looking still 
paler by the contrast and distress of his 
drapery, — ask'd if I stood in want of the 
aids of the church 1 

— I go by water, said I ; — and here's an- 
other will be for making me pay for going 
by oil ! 



CHAR XXXV. 

As I perceived the commissary of the 
post-office would have his six livres four 
sous, I had nothing else for it, but to say 
some smart thing upon the occasion, worth 
the money: 

And so I set off thus : — 

And pray, Mr. Commissary, by what law 
of courtesy is a defenceless stranger to ba 
used just the reverse from what you use a 
Frenchman in this matter !- 

— By no means, said he. 

— Excuse me, said I ; — for you have bo- 
gun, Sir, with tearing off my breeches,-- 
and now you want my pocket. 

Whereas, — had you first taken my pockei, 
as you do with your own people, — and then 
left me bare a — 'd after, — I liad been a 
beast to have compiain'd. 

As it is, — 

— 'Tis contrary to the law of nature 

— 'Tis contrary to reason, 

— 'Tis contrary to the Gospel. 

— But no't to this, — said he, — putting i 
printed paper into my hand : — 

PAR LE ROY. 

— 'Tis a pithy prolegomenon, quoth T ;- 
and so read on — — — — 



— By all which it appears, quoth I, hav- 
ing read it over a little too rapidly, that if a 
man sets out in a post-chaise from Paris, — 
he must go on travelling in one. all the days 
of his life, — or pay for it. — Excuse me, said 
the commissary, the spirit of the ordinance 
is this: — That if you set out with an inten- 
tion of running post from Paris to Avignon, 
&c. you shall not change that intention, or 
mode of travelling, without first satisfying 
the fermiers for two posts further than the 
place you repent at; — and 'tis founded, 
J continued he, upon this, That the Revenues 
are not to fall short through yonr /idleness. 

— O by Heavens ! cried I, — if fickleness 
is taxable in France, — we have notning to 
do but to make the best peace with you wc 
can. 

And so the peace was made ; 

— And if it is a bad one, — as Tristram 
19* 



222 



LIFE AND 



Shandy laid the corner-stone of it, — nobody 
but Tristram Shandy ought to be hanged. 



CHAP. XXXVI. 

Though I was sensible I had said as 
many clever things to the commissary as 
came to six livres four sous, yet I was 
determined to note down the imposition 
amongst my remarks, before I retired from 
the place ; so putting my hand into my coat 
pocket for my remarks — (which, by the bye, 
may be a caution to travellers to take a 
little more care of their remarks for the 
future) — " my remarks were stolen." — 
Never did sorry traveller make such a 
pother and racket about his remarks, as 1 
did about mine, upon the occasion. 

Heaven ! earth ! sea ! fire ! cried I, call- 
ing in every thing to my aid but what I 
should, — my remarks are stolen ! — What 
shall I do 1 — Mr. Commissary ! pray did I 
drop any remarks as I stood beside you 1 — 

You dropp'd a good many very singular 
ones, replied he. — Pugh ! said I, those were 
but a few, not worth above six livres two 
sous; — but these are a large parcel. — He 
shook his head. — Monsieur Le Blanc ! 
Madame Le Blanc ! did you see any papers 
of mine .' — You, maid of the house, run up 
stairs ! — Francois, run up after her ! 

— I must have my remarks ; — they were 
the best remarks, cried I, that ever were 
made, — the wisest, — the wittiest. — What 
shall I do 1 — V/hich way shall I turn my- 
self? 

Sancho Panca, when he lost his ass's 
furniture, did not exclaim more bitterly. 



OPINIONS 

] leave this 
void space, that the reader may swear intt 
it any oath he is most accustomed to. — For 
my own part, if ever I swore a whole oath 
into a vacancy in my life, I think it was 
into that — * ******* * ? sa {^ j . — an( j B0 
my remarks through France, which wer<» 
as full of wit as an egg is full of meat, — 
and as well worth four hundred guineas as 
the said egg is worth a penny, — have I been 
selling here to a chaise-vamper, — for four 
Louis d'Ors ; — and giving him a post-chaise 
(by Heaven !) worth six into the bargain ; 
had it been to Dodsley, or Becket, or any 
creditable bookseller, who was either leav- 
ing otf business, and wanted a post-chaise, 
— or who was beginning it — and wanted 
my remarks, and two or three guineas along 
with them, — I could have borne it; but to 
a chaise-vamper! — Show me to him this 
moment, Francois, said I. — The valet de 
place put on his hat, and led the way ; — 
and I pull'd off mine as I pass'd the com- 
missary, and followed him. 



CHAP. XXXVII. 

When the first transport was over, and 
Jio registers of the brain were beginning 
to get a little out of the confusion into 
which this jumble of cross accidents had 
cast them, — it then presently occurrd to me, 
that I left the remarks in the pocket of the 
chaise; — and that, in selling my chaise, I 
*<ua sold inv remarks along with it, to the 
chaise-vamper. 



CHAP. XXXVIIT. 

W t hen we arrived at the chaise-vamper's 
house, both the house and the shop were 
shut up : it was the eighth of September, 
the nativity of the blessed Virgin Mary, 
mother of God. 

— Tantarra-ra-tan-tivi, — the whole world 
was going out a May-poling, — frisking here, 
— capering there, — nobody cared a button 
for me or my remarks ; so I sat me down 
upon a bench by the door, philosophizing 
upon my condition. By a better fate than 
usually attends me, I had not waited half 
an hour, when the mistress came in to take 
the papilliotes from off her hair, before she 
went to the May-poles. 

The French women, by the bye, love 
May-poles a la folie ; — that is, as much 
as their matins. — Give 'em but a May-pole, 
whether in May, June, July, or September, 
— they never count the times, — down it 
goes, — 'tis meat, drink, washing, and lodg- 
ing to 'em ; — and had we but the policy, 
an' please your Worships (as wood .s a 
little scarce in France) to send Ihe-m but 
plenty of Mav-poles, — 



OF TRISTRA 

The women would set them up ; and 
when they hud done, they would dance 
round them (and the men for company) till 
they were all blind. 

The wife of the chaise-vamper stepp'd 
in, I told you, to take the papilliotes from 
off her hair, — the toilet stands still for no 
man, — so she jerk'd off her cap, to begin 
with them, as she open'd the door; in doing 
which one of them fell upon the ground: — 
I instantly saw it was my own writing. 

O Seigneur ! cried I, — you have got all 
my remarks upon your head, Madam ! — 
J'en suis bien mortifiee, said .she : — 'Tis 
well, thinks I, they have stuck there, — for 
could they have gone deeper, they would 
have made such confusion in a French wo- 
man's noddle, — she had better have gone 
with it unfrizzled to the day of eternity. 

Tenez, said she : — so without any idea 
of the nature of my suffering,, she took 
them from her curls, and put them gravely, 
one by one, into my hat ; — one was twisted 
this way, — another twisted that. — Ay ! by 
my faith, and when they are published, 
quoth I, — 

They will be worse twisted still. 



CHAP. XXXIX. 

And now for Lippius's clock ! said I, 
with the air of a man who had got through 
all his difficulties; — nothing can prevent 
us seeing that, and the Chinese History, 
&.c. — Except the time, said Francois ; — for 
'tis almost eleven. — Then we must speed 
the faster, said I, striding it away to the 
cathedral. 

I cannot say, in my heart, that it gave 
me any concern in being told by one of the 
minor canons, as I was entering the west 
door, — that Lippius's great clock was all 
out of joints, and had not gone for some 
years. — It will give me the more time, 
thought I, to peruse the Chinese history ; 
and besides, I shall be able to give the 
world a better account of the clock in its 
decay, than I could have done in its flour- 
ishing condition. 

— And so away I posted to the college of 
the Jesuits. 

Now it is with ihe project of getting a 



M SHANDY. 22S 

peep at the History of China, in Chinese 
characters, — as with many others I could 
mention, which strike the fancy only at a 
distance ; for as I came nearer and nearer 
to the point, — my blood cool'd, — the freak 
gradually went off, till at length 1 would 
not have given a cherry-stone to have it 
gratified. — The truth was, my time was 
short, and my heart was at the Tomb of the 
Lovers. — I wish to God, said I, as J got the 
rapper in my hand, that the key of the li- 
brary may be but lost. It fell out as well, — 
For all the Jesuits had got the colic — 
and to that degree, as never was known io 
the memory of the oldest practitionei. 



CHAP. XL. 

As I knew the geography of the Tomb 
of the Lovers, as well as if I had lived 
twenty years in Lyons ; namely, that it was 
upon the turning of my right hand, just 
without the gate leading to the Fauxbourg 
de Vaise, — I dispatched Francois to the 
boat, that I might pay the homage I so long 
ow'd it, without a witness of my weakness ; 
— I walk'd with all imaginable joy towards 
the place. — When I saw the gate which 
intercepted the tomb, my heart glowed 
within me. 

— Tender and faithful spirits ! cried I, 
addressing myself to Amandus and Amanda, 
— long, — long have I tarried to drop this 
tear upon your tomb. — I come, — I come — 

When I came, — there was no tomb to 
drop it upon. 

What would I have given for my uncle 
Toby to have whistled Lillibullero ! 



CHAP. XLI. 

No matter how or in what mood, — but i 
flew from the Tomb of the Lovers, — or ra- 
ther I did not fly from it — for there was no 
such thing existing, and just got time 
enough to the boat to save my passage :— ■ 
and ere I had sailed a hundred yards) the 
Rhone and the Saon met together, and car 
ried ine down merrily betwixt them. 



CHAP. XLTI. 



221 LIFE AND OPINIONS 

But I have described this voyage down i 
the Rhone before I made it. 

— So now I am at Avignon ; and as there | I had now the whole south of France, 
is nothing to see but the old house in which from the banks of the Rhone to those of 
the Duke of Ormond resided, and nothing the Garonne, to traverse upon my mule at 
to stop me but a short remark upon the my own leisure, — at my own leisure, — for 
place, in three minutes you will see me: I had left Death, the Lord knows, — and he 
crossing the bridge upon a mule, with only, — how far behind me! — "I have fol 
Francois upon a horse with my portman-l "lowed many a man through France," quoth 
teau behind him, and the owner of both, j he ; — " but never at this mettlesome rate.*' 
striding the way before us, with a long gun — Still he followed, — and still I fled him, — 
upon his shoulder, and a sword under his but I fled him cheerfully ; — still he pursued, 
arm, lest peradventure we should run away — but, like one who pursued his prey with- 
with his cattle. Had you seen my breeches out hope, — as he lagg'd, every step he lost 
in entering Avignon, — though you'd have softened his looks. — Why should I fly him 



seen them better, I think, as I mounted, — 
you would not have thought the precaution 
amiss, or found in your heart to have taken 
it in dudgeon : for my own part, I took it 
most kindly; and determined to make him 
a present of them, when we got to the end 
of our journey, for the trouble they had put 
him to, of arming himself at all points 
against them. 

Before I go further, let me get rid of my 
remark upon Avignon, which is this: — 
That I think it wrong, merely because a 
man's hat has been blown off his head, by 
chance, the first night he comes to Avignon, 
— that he should therefore say, " Avignon 
"is more subject to high winds than any 
" town in all France :" for which reason I 
laid no stress upon the accident till I had 
inquired of the master of the inn about it; 
who telling me seriously it was so; — and 
hearing, moreover, the windiness of Avig- 
non spoken of in the country about as a 
proverb, — I set it down merely to ask the 
learned what can be the cause 1 — the con- 
sequence I saw, for they are all Dukes, 
Marquisses, and Counts there, — the deuce 
a baron in all Avignon ; — so that there is 
scarce any talking to them on a windy day. 

Prithee, friend, said I, take hold of my 
mule for a moment; — for I wanted to pull 
off one of my jack-boots, which hurt my 
heel: — the man was standing quite idle at 
the door of the inn : and as I had taken it 
into my head he was someway concerned 
about the house or stable, I put the bridle 
into his hand, — so begun with my boot. — 
When 1 had finished the affair, I turned 
a knit to take the mule from the man, and 
I hank him, — 

Hut Monsieur le Marquis had walked in. 



at this rate ? 

So, notwithstanding all the commissary 
of the post-office had said, I changed the 
mode of my travelling once more ; and, af- 
ter so precipitate and rattling a course as I 
had run, I flattered my fancy with thinking 
of my mule, and that I should traverse the 
rich plains of Languedoc upon his back, 
as slowly as foot could fall. 

There is nothing more pleasing to a trav- 
eller, — or more terrible to travel- writers, 
than a large rich plain, especially if it is 
without great rivers or bridges; and pre- 
sents nothing to the eye but one unvaried 
picture of plenty : for after they have once 
told you, that 'tis delicious (or delightful aa 
the case happens ;) — that the soil was grate- 
ful, and that Nature pours out all her abun- 
dance, &c they have then a large 

plain upon their hands, which they know 
not what to do with, — and which is of little 
or no use to them, but to carry them to 
some town ; and that town, perhaps of little 
more, but a new place to start from to the 
next plain, — and so on. 

This is most terrible work; — judge if I 
don't manage my plains better. 



CHAP. XLIII. 

I had not gone above two leagues and a 
half, before the man with his gun began tc 
look at his priming. 

I had three several times loiter'd terribly 
behind; half a mile at least every time* 
once in deep conference with adrum-maker, 
who was making drums for the fairs of Bau 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

I did not understand 



225 



saria and Tnrascone 
the principles. — 

The second Time, I cannot so properly 
say I stopp'd, — for meeting a couple of Fran- 
ciscans straitened more for time than myself, 
md not being- able to get to the bottom of 
what I was about, — I had turned back with 
them. — 

The third was an affair of trade with a 
gossip, for a hand-basket of Provence figs 
for four sous: this would have been trans- 
acted at once, but for a case of conscience 
at the close of it ; for when the figs were 
paid for, it turn'd out, that there were two 
dozen of eggs covered over with vine-leaves 
at the bottom of the basket : — as I had no 
intention of buying eggs, — I made no sort 
of claim of them : — as for the space they 
had occupied, what signified it] I had figs 
enow for my money. — 

But it was my intention to have the 
basket; — it was the gossip's intention to 
keep it, without which she could do nothing 
with her eggs ; — and unless I had the basket, 
I could do as little with my figs, which 
were too ripe already, and some of 'em 
burst at the side : this brought on a short 
contention, which terminated in sundry 
proposals what we should both do. — 

How we disposed of our eggs and figs, 
1 defy you or the Devil himself, had he not 
been there (which I am persuaded he was) 
to form the least probable conjecture. — 
You will read the whole of it, — not this 
year, for I am hastening to the story of my 
uncle Toby's amours; — but you will read it 
in the collection of those which have arose 
out of the journey across this plain; — and 
which, therefore, I call my 

PLAIN STORIES. 

How far my pen has been fatigued, like 
those of other travellers, in this journey of 
it, over so barren a track, — the world must 
judge ; but the traces of it, which are now 
all set o' vibrating together this moment, 
tell me 'tis the most fruitful and busy period 
of my life; for as I had made no convention 
with my man with the gun, as to time, — 
by stopping and talking to every soul I met, 
who was not in a full trot, — joining all 
parties before me, — waiting for every soul 
behind, — hailing all those who were coming 
tnrough cross-roads, arresting all kinds of 
2D 



beggars, pilgrims, fiddlers, friars, — not pass- 
ing by a woman in a mulberry-tree without 
commending her legs, and tempting her 
into conversation with a pinch of snuff: — > 
in short, by seizing every handle, of what 
size or shape soever, which chance held out 
to me in this journey, — I turned my plain 
into a city. — 1 was always in company, ana 
with great variety too; and as my mulo 
loved society as much as myself, and had 
some proposals always on his part to offer to 
every beast he met, — I am confident we 
could have passed through Pall-mall or St. 
James's Street, for a month together, with 
fewer adventures, — and seen less of human 
nature. 

O! there is that sprightly frankness, 
which at once unpins every plait of a Lan- 
guedocian's dress, — that whatever is be- 
neath it, it looks so like the simplicity 
which poets sung of in better days ! ] will 
delude my fancy, and believe it is so. 

'Twas in the road betwixt Nismes, and 
Lunel, where there is the best Muscattt) 
wine in all France, and which, by the bye, 
belongs to the honest canons of Montpellier : 
— and foul befall the man who has drunk it 
at their table, who grudges them a drop of it. 

The sun was set; — they had done their 
work; the nymphs had tied up their hair 
afresh, — and the swains were preparing for 
a carousal ; — my mule made a dead point. 
— 'Tis the fife and tabourine, said I. — I'm 
frighten'd to death, quoth he. — They are 
running at the ring of pleasure, said I, 
giving him a prick. — By Saint Boogar, and 
all the saints at the backside of the door of 
purgatory, said he, — (making the same 
resolution with the Abbess of Andouillet's) 
I'll not go a step further. — 'Tis very well, 
Sir, said I. — I never will argue a point with 
one of your family as long as 1 live; so 
leaping off his back, and kicking off one 
boot into this ditch, and t'other into that, — 
I'll take a dance, said I ; — so stay you here 

A sun-burnt daughter of Labor rose up 
from the group to meet me, as 1 advanced 
towards them ; her hair, which wai dark 
chestnut, approaching rather to a black, was 
tied up in a knot, all but a single tress. — 

We want a cavalier, said she, holding 
out both her hands, as if to offer them.- 
And a cavalier you shall have, said I, taking 
hold of both of them. 



226 



LIFE AND OPINIONS, &c. 



Hadst thou, Nannette, been array'd like 
a Duchesse! 

Bu*. that cursed slit in thy petticoat ! 

Nannette cared not for it. — 

We could not have done without you, 
eaid she, letting go one hand, with self- 
taught politeness, and leading me up with 
the other. — 

A lame youth, whom Apollo had recom- 
pensed with a pipe, and to which he had 
added a tabourine of his own accord, ran 
eweetly over the prelude, as he sat upon 
the bank. — Tie me up this tress instantly, 
said Nannette, putting a piece of string 
into my hand. — It taught me to forget I 
was a stranger. — The whole knot fell down. 
— We had been seven years acquainted. 

The youth struck the note upon the tab- 
ourine, his pipe followed, and off we bound- 
ed, — " the deuce take that slit !" 

The sister of the youth, who had stolen 
her voice from Heaven, sung alternately 
witli her brother; — 'twas a Gascoigne roun- 
delay. 

VIVA LA JOIA ' 
FIDON LA TRISTESSA • 



The nymphs join'd in unison and their 
swains an Octave below them. — 

I would have given a crown to have had it 
sew'd up. — Nannette would not have given 
a sous, — Viva la joia was in her lips: — 
Viva la joia was in her eyes. — A transient 
spark of amity shot across the space betwixt 
us. — She look'd amiable ! — Why could I not 
live, and end my days thus] Just Disposer 
of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could 
not a man sit down in the lap of content 
here, — and dance and sing, and say his 
prayers, and go to Heaven with this nut- 
brown maid 1 Capriciously did she bend her 
head on one side, and dance up insidious. — 
Then 'tis time to dance off, quoth I; se 
changing only partners and tunes, I danced 
it away from Lunel to Montpellier ; — from 
thence to Pescnas, Beziers. — I danced it 
along through Narbonne, Carcasson, and 
Castle Naudairy, till at last I danced my- 
self into Pedrillo's pavilion ; where, pull- 
ing out a paper of black lines, that I might 
go on straight-forwards, without digression 
or parenthesis, in my uncle Toby's amoura, 

I began thus : — 



THE 

LIFE AND OPINIONS 

OF 

GENTLEMAN. 



/'/TAP. I. 

OUT softly, — for in these sportive 

plains, and under this genial sun, where at 
this instant all flesh is running out piping, 
fiddling, and dancing to the vintage, and 
every step that's taken, the judgment is 
surprised by the imagination, I defy, not- 
withstanding all that has been said upon 
straight lines* in sundry pages of my book, 
— I defy the best cabbage-planter that ever 
existed, whether he plants backwards or 
forwards, it makes little difference in the 
account (except that he will have more to 
answer for in the one case than in the other) 
— I defy him to go on coolly, critically, and 
canonically, planting his cabbages one by 
one, in straight lines, and stoical distances, 
especially if slits in petticoats are unsew'd 
up, — without ever and anon straddling out, 
or sliding into some bastardly digression. — 
In Freeze-land, Fog-land, and some other 
lands I wot of, — it may be done ! — 

But in this clear climate of fantasy and 
perspiration, where every idea, sensible and 
insensible, gets vent, — in this land, my dear 
Eugenius, — in this fertile land of chivalry 
and romance, where I now sit, unscrewing 
my inkhorn to write my uncle Toby's 
amours, and with all the meanders of Ju- 
lia's track in quest of her Diego, in full 
view of my study-window, — if thou comest 
not and takest me by the hand, — 

What a work it is likely to turn out ! 

Let us begin it. 



* Vide page 199. 



CHAP. II. 

It is with Love as with Cucko-dom. — 
but now I am talking of beginning a book, 
and have long had a thing upon my mind to 
be imparted to the reader, which, if not im- 
parted now, can never be imparted to him 
as long as I live (whereas the comparison 
may be imparted to him any hour in the 
day) — I'll just mention it, and begin in good 
earnest. 

The thing is this : — 

That of all the several ways of beginning 
a book which are now in practice through- 
out the known world, I am confident my 
own way of doing it is the best. — I'm sure 
it is the most religious, — for I begin with 
writing the first sentence, — and trusting to 
Almighty God for the second. 

'Twould cure an author for ever of the 
fuss and folly of opening the street-door, and 
calling in his neighbors, and friends, and 
kinsfolk, with the Devil and all his imps, 
with their hammers, and engines, &c. only 
to observe how one sentence of mine follows 
another, and how the plan follows the whole. 

I wish you saw me half starting out of my 
chair, with what confidence, as I grasp the 
elbow of it, I look up, — catching the idea 
even sometimes before it half-way reaches 
me ! 

— I believe, in my conscience, I intercept 
many a thought which Heaven intended tor 
another man. 

Pope and his portrait are fools to me.- - 
no martyr is ever so full of faith or fire.- I 
wish I could say of good works too; — bu' I 
have no 



228 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



Zeal ot A.isrer, — or 

Anger or Zeal ; — 
and, till gods and mm agree together to call 
it by the same name, — the arrantest Tar- 
tuffe in science, in politics, or in religion, 
shall never kindle a spark within me, or 
have a worse word, or a more unkind greet- 
ing, than what ht will read in the next 
chapter. 



CHAP. III. 



—Bon jour ! — good-morrow ! — so you 
have got your cloak on betimes ! — but 'tis a 
cold morning, and you judg ; the matter 
rightly ; — 'tis better to be well mounted 
than go o'foot; — and obstructions in the 
glands are dangerous. — And how goes it 
with thy concubine, — thy wife, — and thy 
little ones o' both sides 1 and when did you 
hear from the old gentleman and lady, — 
your sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins? — I 
hope they have got the better of their colds, 
coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers, strangua- 
ries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore eyes. 

— What a devil of an apothecary! to take 
so much blood, — give such a vile purge, — 
puke, — poultice, — plaster, — night-draught, 
— clyster, — blister! — And why so many 
grains of calomel ? Santa Maria ! and such 
a dose of opium ! periclitating, pardi ! the 
whole family of ye, from head to tail ! — By 
my great-aunt Dinah'sokl black velvetmask! 
I think there was no occasion for it. 

Now this being a little bald about the 
chin, by frequently putting off and on, be- 
fore she was got with child by the coach- 
man, — not one of our family would wear it 
after. To cover the mask afresh, was more 
than the mask was worth ; — and to wear a 
mask which was bald, or which could be 
half seen through, was as bad as having no 
mask at all. 

— This is the reason, may it please your 
Reverences, that in all our numerous fami- 
ly, fur these four generations, we count no 
more than one Archbishop, a Welsh Judge, 
some three or four Aldermen, and a single 
Mountebank. 

In 'lie sixteenth century, we boast of no 
less tnan a dozen alchymists. 



CHAP. IV. 

" It is with Love as with Cuckold am ;'* - 
the suffering party is at least the third, but, 
generally, the last in the house who knows 
any thing about the matter : this comes, aa 
all the world knows, from having half a dozen 
words for one thing ; and so long as what 
in this vessel of the human frame is Love, 
— may be Hatred in that, — Sentiment half u 
yard higher, — and Nonsense, — No, Madam, 
— not there ; I mean at the part I am now 
pointing to with my fore-finger, — how can 
we help ourselves ] 

Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if 
you please, who ever soliloquized upon this 
mystic subject, my uncle Toby was the 
worst fitted to have pusb'd his researches 
through such a contention of feelings ; and 
he had infallibly let them all run on, as we 
do worse matters, to see what they would 
turn out, — had not Bridget's pre-notilication 
of them to Susannah, and Susannah's re 
peated manifestoes thereupon to all the 
world, made it necessary for my uncle Toby 
to look into the affair. 



CHAP. V. 

Why weavers, gardeners, and gladiators, 
— or a man with a pined leg (proceeding 
from some ailment in the foot) — should 
ever have had some tender nymph breaking 
her heart in secret for them, are points well 
and duly settled and accounted for, by an- 
cient and modern physiologists. 

A water-drinker, provided he is a profess- 
ed one, and does it without fraud or covin, 
is precisely in the same predicament : not 
that, at first sight, there is any consequence, 
or show of logic in it, " That a rill of cold 
" water dribbling through my inward parts, 
" should light up a torch in my Jenny's — " 

— The proposition does not strike one ; on 
the contrary, it seems to run opposite to the 
natural workings of causes and effects : — 

But it shows the weakness and imbecility 
of human reason. 

— " And in perfect good health with it !" 

— The most perfect, Madam, that Friend- 
ship herself could wish me. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



229 



— "And drink nothing! — nothing but 
water!" 

— Impetuous fluid ! the moment thou 
pressest against the flood-gates of the 
br;iin, — see how they give way ! 

— In swims Curiosity* beckoning to her 
damsels to follow ; — they dive into the cen- 
tre of the current. 

Fancy sits musing upon the bank, and, 
with her eyes following the stream, turns 
straws and bulrushes into masts and bow- 
sprits. — And Desire, with vest held up to 
the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as 
they swim by her, with the other. 

O ye water-drinkers! is it then by this 
delusive fountain, that ye have so often 
governed and turn'd this world about like 
a mill-wheel, — grinding the faces of the 
impotent, bepowdering their ribs, — bepep- 
pering their noses, and changing sometimes 
even the very frame and face of nature ! 

— If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would 
drink more water, Eugenius. — And, if I was 
you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I. 

Which shows they had both read Longi- 
nus. 

For my own par.t, I am resolved never to 
read any book but my own as long as I 
live. 



CHAP. VI. 



I wish my uncle Toby had been a water- 
drinker, for then the thing had been account- 
ed for, That the first moment Widow Wad- 
man saw him, she felt something stirring 
within her in his favor; — something! — 
something. 

— Something, perhaps, more than friend- 
ship, — less than love : — something, — no 
matter what, — no matter where ; — I would 
not give a single hair of my mule's tail, and 
be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed, the 
villain has not many to spare, and is not a 
little vicious into the bargain) to be let by 
your Worships into the secret 

But the truth is, my uncle Toby was not 
u water-drinker; he drank it neither pure 

lor mix'd, nor anyhow, nor anywhere, ex- 
cept fortuitously upon some advanced posts, 
where better lmuor was not to be had, — or 

ruring the time he was under cure; when, 
the surgeon telling him it would extend the 



fibres, and bring them sooner into contact, 
— my uncle Toby drank it for quietness' 
sake. 

Now, as all the world knows that no ef- 
fect in nature can be produced without a 
cause, and as it is as well known that my 
uncle Toby was neither a weaver, a gardener, 
nor a gladiator, — unless, as a captain, you 
will needs have him one, — but then he was 
only a captain of foot, — and, besides, the 
whole is an equivocation. — There is no- 
thing left for us to suppose, but that my 
uncle Toby's leg, — but that will avail us 
little in the present hypothesis, unless it 
had proceeded from some ailment in the 
foot, — whereas his leg was not emaciated 
from any disorder in his foot, — for my uncle 
Toby's leg was not emaciated at all. It was 
a little stiff and awkward, from a total dis- 
use of it for the three years he lay confined 
at my father's house in town ; but it was 
plump and muscular, and, in all other re- 
spects, as good and promising a leg as the 
other. 

I declare, I do not recollect .my one opin- 
ion or passage of my life, where my under- 
standing was more at a loss to make ends 
meet, and torture the chapter I had been 
writing, to the service of the chapter follow- 
ing it, than in the present case : one would 
think I took a pleasure in running into diih- 
culties of this kind, merely to make fresh 
experiments of getting out of 'em. — Incon- 
sidorate soul that thou art ! What ! are not 
the unavoidable distresses with which, as 
an author and a man, thou art hemm'd in 
on every side of thee ; — are they, Tristram, 
not sufficient, but thou mu.st entangle thy- 
self still more! 

Is it not. enough that thou art in debt, 
and that thou hast ten cart-loads of thy fifth 
and sixth volumes* still, — still unsold, ana 
art almost at thy wit's ends how to get them 
off thy hands! 

To this hour art thou not tormented with 
the vile asthma that thou gattest in skating 
against the wind in Flanders! and it is but 
two months ago that, in a fit of laughter, on 
seeing a cardinal make water like a quiris- 
ter (with both hands) thou brakest a vessel 
in thy lungs, whereby, in two hours, thou 
lost as many quarts of blood ; and, hadst thou 



* Alluding to the first edition. 



230 LIFE AND OPINIONS 

lost as much mor°, did not the faculty tell 
thee, — it would have amounted to a gal- 
lon?— 



CHAP. VII. 



— But, for Heaven's sake, let us not talk 
of quarts or gallons, let us take the story 
straight before us ; it is so nice and intricate 
a one, it will scarce bear the transposition 
of a single tittle ; and somehow or other, you 
have got me thrust almost into the middle 
of it. 

I beg we may take more care. 



more lights than one; — but here, for hen 
soul, she can see him in no light without 
mixing something of her own goods an* 1 
chattels along with him, — till, by reiterated 
acts of such combinations, he gets foisted 
into her inventory, 

And then, good night. 

But this is not matter of System ; for I 
have delivered that above : — nor is it matter 
of Breviary ; — for I make no man's creed 
but my own : — nor matter of Fact, — at least 
that I know of: but 'tis matter copulative 
and introductory to what follows. 



CHAP. IX. 



CHAP. VIII. 

My uncle Toby and the Corporal had post- 
ed down with so much heat and precipita- 
tion, to take possession of the spot of ground 
we have so often spoke of, in order to open 
their campaign as early as the rest of the 
allies; that they had forgot one of the most 
necessary articles of the whole affair; it 
was neither a pioneer's spade, a pick-ax 
or a shovel ; — 

It was a bed to lie on : so that as Shandy 
hall was at that time unfurnished ; and the 
little inn where poor Le Fevre died, not yet 
built, — my uncle Toby was constrained to 
accept of a bed at Mrs. Wadman's, for a 
night or two, till Corporal Trim (who, to 
the character of an excellent valet, groom, 
cook, sempster, surgeon, and engineer, su- 
peradded that of an excellent upholsterer 
too) with the help of a carpenter and a 
couple of tailors, constructed one in my 
uncle Tobv's house. 

A daughter of Eve, for such was Widow 
Wadman, and it's all the character I intend 
to give of her, 

— "That she was a perfect woman, — " 
had better be fifty leagues off, — or in her 
warm bed, or playing with a case-knife, — 
or any thing you please, — than make a man 
i he object of her attention, when the house 
and all the furniture is her own. 

There is nothing in it out of doors and in 
fcroad daylight, where a woman has a pow- 
er, physically speaking, of viewing a man in 



I do not speak it with regard to thr 
coarseness or cleanness of them, — or the 
strength of their gussets; — but pray, Do 
not night-shifts differ from day-shifts a* 
much in this particular, as in any thing ehv 
in the world, That they so far exceed the 
others in length, that, when you are lain 
down in them, they fall almost as much 
below the feet as the day-shifts fall short of 
theml 

Widow Wadman's night-shifts (as was 
the mode, I suppose, in King William's and 
Queen Anne's reigns) were cut, however, 
after this fashion ; and, if the fashion is 
changed (for in Italy they are come to no- 
thing) — so much the worse for the public : 
they were two Flemish ells and a half in 
length ; so that, allowing a moderate wo- 
man two ells, she had half an ell to. spare, 
to do what she would with. 

Now, from one little indulgence gained 
after another, in the many bleak and De- 
cemberly nights of a seven years' widow- 
hood, things had insensibly come to this 
pass, and, for the two last years, had got es- 
tablished into one of the ordinances of the 
bed-chamber, — That as soon as Mrs. Wad- 
man was put to bed, and had got her legs 
stretched down to the bottom of it, of which 
she always gave Bridget notice, — Bridget 
with all suitable decorum, having first open'd 
the bed-clothes at the feet, took hold of the 
half-ell of cloth we are speaking of, and 
having gently, and with both her hands, 
drawn it dovvi. wards to its furthest exten- 
sion, and then contracted it again sidelong 



bv four or five even plaits, she took a large 
corking-pin out of her sleeve, and, with the 
point directed towards her, pinn'd the plaits 
all fast together, a little above the hem; 
which done, she tuck'd all in tight at the 
feet, and wish'd her mistress a good-night. 

This was constant, and without any other 
variation than this ; that, on shivering and 
tempestuous nights, when Bridget untuck'd 
the feet of the bed, &c. to do this, she con- 
sulted no thermometer but that of her own 
passions; and so performed it standing, — 
kneeling, — or squatting, according to the 
different degrees of faith, hope, and charity, 
she was in, and bore towards her mistress 
that night. In every other respect, the 
etiquette was sacred, and might have vied 
with the most mechanical one of the most 
inflexible bed-chamber in Christendom. 

The first night, as scon as the Corporal 
had conducted my uncle Toby up stairs, 
which was about ten, — Mrs. VVadman threw 
herself into her arm-chair, and crossing her 
left knee with her right, which formed a 
resting-place for her elbow, she reclin'd her 
cheek upon the palm of her hand, and, 
leaning forwards, ruminated till midnight 
upon both sides of the question. 

The second night she went to her bureau, 
and, having ordered Bridget to bring her 
up a couple of fresh candles and leave them 
upon the table, she took out her marriage- 
settlement, and read it over with great de- 
votion : and the third night (which was the 
!ast of my uncle Toby's stay) when Bridget 
had pullM down the night-shift, and was 
essaying to stick in the corking-pin, — 

— With a kick of both heels at once, but 
at the same time the most natural kick that 
could be kick'd in her situation ; — for sup 
posing ********* to be the sun in its 
meridian, it was a north-east kick ; she 
kick'd the pin out of her fingers, — the eti- 
quette which hung upon it, down, — down 
it fell to the ground, and was shiver'd into 
a thousand atoms. 

From all which, it was plain that Widow 
VVadman was in love with my uncle Toby. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 231 

the demolition of Dunkirk, when all tiu* 
other civilities of Europe were settled, that 
he found leisure to return this. 

This made an armistice (that is, sneaking 
with regard to my uncle Toby, — out, with 
respect to Mrs. Wadman, a vacancy) — 01 
almost eleven years. But in all cases or 
this nature, as it is the second blow, happen 
at what distance of time it will, which 
makes the fray, — I choose, for that reason, 
to call these the amours of my uncle Toby 
with Mrs. Wadman, rather than the amours 
of Mrs. Wadman with my uncle Toby. 

This is not a distinction without a differ- 
ence. 

It is not like the affair of an old hat cock'd, 
— and a cocked old hat, about which your 
Reverences have so often been at odds with 
one another; — but there is a difference here 
in the nature of things ; — 

And, let me tell you gentry, a wide one 
too. 



CHAP. X. 



My uncle Toby's head at that time was 
full of other matters, so that it was not till 



CHAP. XL 

Now, as Widow Wadman did love my 
uncle Toby, — and my uncle Toby did not 
love Widow Wadman, there was nothing 
for Widow Wadman to do, but to go on 
and love my uncle Toby, — or let it alone. 

Widow Wadman would do neither the 
one nor the other. 

— Gracious Heaven ! — but I forget I am 
a little of her temper myself: for whenever 
it so falls out, which it sometimes does, 
about the equinoxes, that an earthly goddess 
is so much this, and that, and t'other, that 
I cannot eat my breakfast for her, — and that 
she careth not three half-pence whether I 
eat my breakfast or not, — 

— Curse on her! and so I send her to 
Tartary, and from Tartary to Terra del 
Fuego, and so on to the Devil. In short, 
there is not an infernal niche where I do 
not take her divinityship and stick it. 

But as the heart is tender, and the pas- 
sions in these tides ebb and flow ten times 
in a minute, I instantly bring her back 
again ; and, as I do all things in extremes, 
I place her in the very centre of the milky 
way, — Brightest of stars' thou wilt she«l 
thy influence uoon some one. 



232 LIFE AND 

— The deuce take her and her influence 
too: — for, at that word, I lose all patience: 
— much good may it do him, ! — By all that 
is hirsute and gashly ! I cry, taking off my 
furr'd cap, and twisting it round my finger, 
— I would not give sixpence for a dozen 
euch ! 

— But 'tis an excellent cap too (putting 
it upon my head, and pressing it close to 
my ears) —and warm, — and soft, especially 
if you stroke it the right way: — but> alas! 
that will never be my luck: — (so here my 
philosophy is shipwreck'd again.) 

— No ; I shall never have a finger in the 
pyc (so here I break my metaphor.) 

Crust and crumb, 

Inside and out, 

Top and bottom ; — I detest it, I hate it, 
I repudiate it ; — I am sick at the sight of 
it:— 
'Tis all pepper, 
garlic, 
staragen, 
salt, and 

Devil's dung. — By the great arch- 
cook of cooks, who does nothing, I think, 
from morning to night, but sit down by the 
lire-side and invent inflammatory dishes for 
us, 1 would not touch it for the world. 

— O Tristram ! Tristram ! cried Jenny. 

O Jenny ! Jenny ! replied I, and so went 
f.<n with the twelfth chapter 



CHAP. XII. 

— « Not touch it for the world," did I say 1 
Lord, how I have heated my imagination 
-"^th this metaphor! 



CHAP. XIII. 

Which shows, let your Reverences and 
Worships say what you will of it (for, as 
for thinking, — all who do think, — think 
pretty much alike both upon it and other 
matters) — Love is certainly, at least alpha- 
betically speaking, one of the most 

A gitating, 

B ewitching, 

O onfounded, 



OPINIONS 

D evilish affairs of life; the most 

E xtravagant, 

F utilitous, 

G aligaskinish, 

H andy-dandyish, 

I racundulous (there is noK to it) and 

L yrical of all human passions : at the 
same time, the most 

M isgiving, 

N innyhammering, 

O bstipating, 

P ragmatical, 

S tridulous, 

R idiculous, though, by the bye, the 

R should have gone first : — but, in short, 'tis 
of such a nature, as my father once told my 
uncle Toby, upon the close of a long disser- 
tation upon the subject: — " You can scarce," 
said he, "combine two ideas together upon 
"it, brother Toby, without an hypallage;" 
— What's that? cried my uncle Toby. 

The cart before the horse, replied my 
father. 

— And what is he to do there 1 cried my 
uncle Toby. 

— Nothing, quoth my father, but to get 
in, — or let it alone. 

Now Widow Wadman, as I told you be- 
fore, would do neither the one nor the other. 
She stood, however, ready harnessed and 
caparisoned at all points, to watch accidents. 



CHAP. XIV. 

The Fates, who certainly all foreknew 
of these amours of Widow Wadman and 
my uncle Toby, had, from the first creation 
of matter and motion (and with more cour- 
tesy than they usually do things of this 
kind) established such a chain of causes 
and effects hanging so fast to one another, 
that it was scarce possible for my uncle 
Toby to have dwelt in any other house in 
the world, or to have occupied any other 
garden in Christendom but the very house 
and garden which join'd and lay parallel to 
Mrs. Wadman's: this, with the advantage 
of a thickset arbor in Mrs. Wadman's-' gar- 
den, but. planted in the hedjre-row of my 
uncle Toby's, put all the occasions into her 
hands which love-militanrv waited she 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



233 



300 Id pbserve my uncle Toby's motions, 
and was mistress likewise of his councils 
of war; and as his unsuspecting heart had 
given leave to the Corporal, through the 
mediation of Bridget, to make her a wicker- 
gate of communication to enlarge her 
walks, it enabled her to carry on her ap- 
proaches to the very door of the sentry- 
box; and sometimes, out of gratitude, to 
make an attack, and endeavor to blow my 
uncic Toby up in the very sentry-box itself. 



CHAP. XV. 

It is a great pity ; — but 'tis certain, from 
every day's observation of man, that he 
may be set on fire, like a candle, at either 
end, — provided there is a sufficient wick 
standing out; if- there is not — there's an 
end of the affair; and if there is, — by light- 
ing it at the bottom, as the flame in that 
case has the misfortune generally to put 
out itself, — there's an end of the affair 
again. 

For my part, could I always have the or- 
dering of it which way I would be burnt 
myself, — for I cannot bear the thoughts of 
being burnt like a beast, — I would oblige a 
housewife constantly to light me at the top ; 
for then I should burn down decently to the 
socket; that is from my head to my heart, 
from my heart to my liver, from my liver 
to my bowels, and so on by the mesenteric 
veins and arteries, through all the turns 
and lateral insertions of the intestines and 
their tunicles to the blind gut. — 

I beseech you, Doctor Slop, quoth my 
uncle Toby, interrupting him as he men- 
tioned the blind gut, in a discourse with 
my father the night my mother was brought 
to bed of me, — I beseech you, quoth my 
uncle Toby, to tell me which is the blind 
gut ; for, old as I am, I vow I do not know 
to this day where it lies. 

— The blind gut, answered Doctor Slop, 
>ics betwixt the llion and Colon. 

—In man ? said my father. 

— Tis precisely the same, cried Doctor 
Slop, in a woman. 

— That's more than I know, quoth my 
fether. 

2 E 



CHAP. XVI. 

— And so, to make sure of both systems. 
.Mrs. Wadrnan. predetermined to light m •' 
uncle Toby neither at this end nor that, 
but, like a prodigal's candle, to light him, 
if possible, at both ends at once. 

Now, through all the lumber-rooms of 
military furniture, including both of horse 
and foot, from the great arsenal of Venice 
to the Tower of London (exclusive) if Mrs. 
Wadrnan had been rummaging for seven 
years together, and with Bridget to help 
her, she could not have found any one blind 
or mantelet so fit for her purpose as that 
which the expediency of my uncle Toby's 
affairs had fix'd up ready to her hands. 

I believe I have told you, — but I don't 
know, — possibly I have ; — be it as it will, 
'tis one of the number of those many things 
which a man had better do over again than 
dispute about it, — That whatever town or 
fortress the Corporal was at work upon, 
during the course of their campaign, my 
uncle Toby always took care, on the inside 
of his sentry-box, which was towards his 
left hand, to have a plan of the place, fast* 
en'd up with two or three pins at the top, 
but loose at the bottom, for the convemency 
of holding it up to the eye, &c. ... as oc- 
casions required ; so that when an attack 
was resolved upon, Mrs. Wadrnan had no- 
thing more to do, when she had got ad- 
vanced to the door of the sentry-box, but to 
extend her right hand ; and edging in her 
left foot at the same movement, to take 
hold of the map or plan, or upright, or 
whatever it was, and with out-stretched 
neck meeting it half-way, — to advance it 
towards her; on which my uncle Toby's 
passions were sure to catch fire, — for lie 
would instantly take hold of the other cor- 
ner of the map in his left hand, and with 
the end of his pipe in the other, begin an 
explanation. 

When the attack was advanced to this 
point, — the world will naturally enter into 
the reasons of Mrs. Wadman's next stroke 
of generalship; — which was, to take mv 
uncle Toby's tobacco-pipe out of his hanu 
as soon as she possibly could ; which, under 
one pretence or other, but generally thai 
of pointing more distinctly at some redoubt 
20» 



234 LIFE AND 

or breastwork i.n the map, she would effect 
before mv uncle Toby (poor soul !) had well 
march'd above half a dozen toises with it. 

— It obliged my uncle Toby to make use 
of his fore-finger. 

The difference it made in the attack was 
this : — That in going upon it, as in the first 
case, with the end of her fore-finger against 
the end of my uncle Toby's tobacco-pipe, 
she might have travelled with it along the 
lines, from Dan to Beersheba, had my un- 
cle Toby's lines reached so far, without any 
effect : for as there was no arterial or vital 
heat in the end of the tobacco-pipe, it could 
excite no sentiment, — it could neither give 
fire by pulsation, — nor receive it by sym- 
nathy ; — 'twas nothing but smoke. 

Whereas, in following my uncle Toby's 
fore-finger with hers, close through all the 
little turns and indentings of his works, — 
pressing sometimes against the side of it, — 
then treading upon its nail, — then tripping 
it up, — then touching it here, — then there, 
and so on, — it set something at least in mo- 
tion. 

This, though slight skirmishing, and at 
a distance from the main body, yet drew on 
the rest; for here, the map usually falling 
with the back of it close to the side of the 
pentry-box, my uncle Toby, in the simpli- 
city of his soul, would lay his hand flat upon 
it. in order to go on with his explanation ; 
and Mrs. Wadman, by a manoeuvre as quick 
as thought, would as certainly place hers 
close beside it. This at once opened a com- 
munication, large enough for any sentimr it 
to pass or repass, which a person skill'd in 
the elementary and practical part of love- 
making has occasion for. — 

By bringing up her fore-finger parallel 
(as before) to my uncle Toby's — it unavoid- 
ably brought the thumb into action; and 
the fore-finger and thumb being once en- 
gaged, as naturally brought in the whole 
hand. Thine, dear uncle Toby ! was never 
now in its right place, — Mrs. Wadman had 
it ever to take up, or, with the gentlest 
pushings, protrusions, and equivocal com- 
pressions, that a hand to be removed is ca- 
pable of receiving, to get it press'd a hair- 
breadth of one side out of her way. 

Whilst this was doing, how could she 
'brget to make him sensible that it was her 



OPINIONS 

leg (and no one's else) at the bottom of the 
sentry-box, which slightly press'd against 
the calf of his ! — So that my uncle Toby 
being thus attack'd, and sore push'd on both 
his wings, — was it a wonder, if now and 
then, it put his centre into disorder] 

— The deuce take it! said my uncle 
Toby. 



CHAP. XVII. 

These attacks of Mrs. Wadman, you will 
readily conceive to be of different kinds: 
varying from each other like the attacks 
which history is full of, and from the same 
reasons. A general looker-on would scarce 
allow them to be attacks at all ; — or if he 
did, would confound them all together; — 
but I write not to them. It will be time 
enough to be a little more exact in my de- 
scriptions of them as I come up to them, 
which will not be for some chapters ; hav- 
ing nothing more to add in this, but that in 
a bundle of original papers and drawings, 
which my father took care to roll up by 
themselves, there is a plan of Bouchain in 
perfect preservation (and shall be kept so — 
whilst I have power to preserve any thing;) 
upon the lower corner of which, on the right 
hand side, there are still remaining the 
marks of a snuffy finger and thumb ; which, 
there is all the reason in the world to im- 
agine, were Mrs. Wad man's ; for the oppo- 
site side of the margin, which I suppose to 
have been my uncle Toby's, is absolutely 
clean. This seems an authenticated record 
of one of these attacks ; for there are ves- 
tigia of the two punctures partly grown 
up, but still visible on the opposite corner 
of the map, which are unquestionably the 
very holes through which it has been pricked 
up in the sentry-box. — 

By all that is priestly! I value this pre- 
cious relic, with its stigmata and pricks, 
more than all the relics of the Romisn 

church; always excepting when I am 

writing upon these matters, the pricks which 
entered the flesh of St. Radao-unda in the 
desert; which, in your road from Fesse. to 
Cluny, the nuns of that name w.'l sho> 
you for love. 



OS TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



23h 



CHAP. XMII. 

I think, an' please your Honor, quoth 
Trim, the fortifications are quite destroyed; 
— and the bason is upon a level with the 
mole. — 1 think so too, — replied my uncle 
Toby, with a sigh half suppress'd ; — but 
step into the parlor, Trim, for the stipula- 
tion ; — it lies upon the table. 

— It has lain there these six weeks, re- 
plied the Corporal; till this very morn in g 
that the old woman kindled the fire with it. 

— Then, said my uncle Toby, there is no 

further occasion for our services. The 

more, an' please your Honor, the pity, said 
the Corporal; in uttering- which, he cast 
his spade into the wheel-barrow, which was 
beside him, with an air the most expressive 
of die-consolation that can be imagined, and 
was heavily turning about to look for his 
pick-ax, his pioneer's shovel, his piquets, 
and other little military stores, in order to 
carry them off the field, — when an heigh-ho! 
from the sentry-box, which being- made of 
thin slit deal, reverberated the sound more 
sorrowfully to his ear, forbade him. 

— No, said the Corporal to himself, I'll 
jo it before his Honor rises to-morrow mowi- 
ng; so taking his spade out of the wheel- 
barrow again, with a little earth in it, as if 
to level something at the foot of the glacis, 
— but with a real intent to approach nearer 
to his master, in order to divert him, — he 
loosen'd a sod or two, — pared their edges 
with his spade, and havinsr given them a 
gentle blow or two with the back of it, he 
sat himself down close by my uncle Toby's 
feet, and began as follows: — 



CHAP. XIX. 

It was a thousand pities; — though I be- 
lieve, an' please your Honor, I am going to 
say but a foolish kind of a thing for a sol- 
dier, — 

A soldier, cried my uncle Toby, inter- 
rupting the Corporal, is no more exempt 
from saying a foolish thing, Trim, than a 
man of letters, — But not so often, an 1 please 

your Honor, replied the Corporal. My 

Micle Toby gave a nod. 

—It was a thousand pities, thru, said the 
Corporal, casting his eye upon Dunkirk and 



the Mole, as Servius Sulpicius, in return 
ing out of Asia (when he sailed from JF.rr\r\h 
towards Megara) did upon Corinth and Py- 
raeus, — 

" It was a thousand pities, an' please your 
Honor, to destroy these works, — and a 
thousand pities to have let them stand." 

— Thou art right, Trim, in both cases, 
said my uncle Toby. — This, continued the 
Corporal, is the reason, that from the be- 
ginning of their demolition to the end, — 1 
have never once whistled, or sung, or laugh'd. 
or cry'd, or talk'd of past-done deeds, or told 
your Honor one story, good or bad. 

— Thou hast many excellencies, Trim, 
said my uncle Toby ; and I hold it not the 
least of them, as thou happenest to be a 
story-teller, that of the number thou hast 
told me, either to amuse me in my painful 
hours, or divert me in my grave ones, — 
thou hast seldom told me a bad one. 

— Because, an' please your Honor, ex- 
cept one of a Kirig of Bohemia and hi* 
seven castles, — they are all true ; for they 
are about myself. 

— I do not like the subject the worse, 
Trim, said my uncle Toby, on that score. 
But, prithee, what is this story? Thou hast 
excited my curiosity. 

— I'll tell it your Honor, quoth the Cor- 
poral, directly. — Provided, said my uncle 
Toby, looking earnestly towards Dunkirk 
and the Mole again, — provided it is not a 
merry one : to such, Trim, a man should 
ever bring one half of the entertainment 
along with him; and the disposition I am 
in at present, — would wrong both thee, 
Trim, and thy story. — It is not a merry one, 
by any means, replied the Corporal. — Nor 
would I have it altogether a grave one, 
added my uncle Toby. — It is neither the 
one nor the other, replied the Corporal ; but 
will suit your Honor exactly. — Then I'll 
thank thee for it with all my heart, cried 
my uncle Toby; so prithee begin it, Trim. 

The Corporal made his reverence; and 
though it is not so easy a matter as the 
world imagines, to pull off a lank Montero- 
cap with grace, — or a whit less difficult, in 
my conceptions, when a man is sitting squat 
upon the ground, to make a bow so teaming 
with respect as the Corporal was wont 
yet, by sufterinsr the palm of his right hand. 
[which was towards his master, to slip back 



23' 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



wards upon tne grass, a little beyond his 
body, in order to allow it the greater sweep, 
— and by an unforced compression, at the 
name time, of his cap with the thumb and 
the two fore-fingers of his left, by which 
the diameter of the cap became reduced; 
io that it might be said rather to be insen- 
sibly squeez'd, — than pull'd off with a flatus, 
— the Corporal acquitted himself of both in 
a better manner than the posture of his af- 
fairs promised; and having hemmed twice, 
to find in what key his story would best go, 
and best suit his master's humor, — he ex- 
changed a single look of kindness with him, 
and set off thus: — 

THE STORY OF THE KING OF BOHEMIA AND 
HIS SEVEN CASTLES. 

There was a certain King of Bo — he — 

As the Corporal was entering the confines 
of Bohemia, my uncle Toby obliged him to 
halt for a single moment. He had set out 
bare-headed ; having, since he pull'd off his 
Montero-cap in the latter end of the last 
chapter, left it lying beside him on the 
ground. 

— The eye of Goodness espieth all things ; 
so that before the Corporal had well got 
through the first five words of his story, had 
my uncle Toby twice touch'd his Montero- 
cap with the end of his cane, interroga- 
tively : — as much as to say, Why don't you 
put it on, Trim I — Trim took it up with the 
most respectful slowness, and casting a 
glance of humiliation, as he did it, upon the 
embroidery of the fore-part, which being 
dismally tarnish'd and fray'd, moreover, in 
some of the principal leaves and boldest 
parts of the pattern, he laid it down again 
between his two feet, in order to moralize 
upon the subject. 

— 'Tis every word of it but too true, cried 
my uncle Toby, that thou art about to ob- 
serve : — 

11 Nothing in this world, Trim, is made 
"fo last for ever." 

— But when tokens, dear Tom, of thy 
wve and remembrance wear out, said Trim, 
what shall we say ] 

— There is no occasion, Trim, quoth my 
uncle Toby, to say any thing else ; and was 
a man to puzzle his brains till Doomsday, I 
aHieve, Trim, it would be impossible. 

The Corporal perceiving my uncle Toby 



was in the right, and that it would be in 
vain for the wit of man to think of extract 
ing a purer moral from his cap, withou 
further attempting it, he put it on ; and 
passing his hand across his forehead to rub 
out a pensive wrinkle, which the text and 
doctrine between them had engender'd, he 
return'd, with the same look and tone ot 
voice, to his story of the King of Bohemia 
and his seven castles. 

THE STORY OF THE KING OF BOHEMIA AND 
HIS SEVEN CASTLES, CONTINUED. 

There was a certain King of Bohemia ; 
but in whose reign, except his own, I air. 
not able to inform your Honor. — 

I do not desire it of thee, Trim, by anv 
means, cried my uncle Toby. 

— It was a little before the time, an' 
please your Honor, when giants were be- 
ginning to leave off breeding : — but in what 
year of our Lord that was, — 

— I would not give a halfpenny to know, 
said my uncle Toby. 

— Only, an' please your Honor, it makes 
a story look the better in the face. 

— 'Tis thy own, Trim, so ornament it 
after thy own fashion ; and take any date, 
continued my uncle Toby, looking pleas- 
antly upon him ; — take any date in the 
whole world thou choosest, and put it to,- - 
thou art heartily welcome. — 

The Corporal bowed ; for of every cei: 
tury, and of every year of that century, 
from the first creation of the world down to 
Noah's flood ; and from Noah's flood to the 
birth of Abraham; through all the pil- 
grimages of the patriarchs, to the departure 
of the Israelites out of Egypt ; — and through- 
out all the Dynasties, Olympiads, Urbecon- 
ditas, and other memorable epochas of the 
different nations of the world, down to the 
coming of Christ, and from thence to the 
very moment in which the Corporal wad 
telling his story, — had my uncle Toby sub- 
jected this vast empire of time, and all its 
abysses, at his feet ; but as Modesty scarce 
touches with a finger what Liberality offers 
her with both hands open, — the Corporal 
contented himself with the very worst year 
of the whole bunch ; which, to prevent 
your Honors of the Majority and Minority 
from tearing the very flesh off your bones 
in contestation, ' Whether that v<?ar is not 



4. ways the last-cast year of the last-cast 
almanac!' — I tell you plainly, it was; but 
from a different reason than you wot of. 

— It was the year next him; — which be- 
ing- the year of our Lord seventeen hun- 
dred and twelve, when the DukeofOrmond 
was playing the Devil in Flanders, — the 
Corporal took it, and set out with it afresh 
en Ins expedition to Bohemia. 

THE STORY OF THE KING OF BOHEMIA AND 
HIS SEVEN CASTLES, CONTINUED. 

Tn the year of our Lord one thousand 
seven hundred and twelve, there was, an' 
pleate your Honor, — 

— To tell thee truly, Trim, quoth my 
uncle Toby, any other date would have 
pleased me much better, not only on account 
of the sad stain upon our history that year 
in marching off our troops, and refusing to 
cover the siege of Quesnoi, though Fagel 
was carrying on the works with such in- 
credible^vigor, — but likewise on the score, 
Trim, of thy own story; because if there 
are, — and which, from what thou hast dropt, 
Lpartly suspect to be the fact, — if there-are 
giants in it, — 

— There is but one, an' please your Honor. 

— 'Tis as bad as twenty, replied my un- 
cle Toby; thou should'st have carried him 
back some seven or eight hundred years out 
of harm's way, both of critics and other 
people; and therefore, I would advise thee, 
if ever thou tellest it again, — 

— If I live, an' please your Honor, but 
once to get through it, I will never tell it 
again, quoth Trim, either to man, woman, 
or child. — Poo — poo! said my uncle Toby; 
— but wit) accents of such sweet encour- 
agement did he utter it, that the Corporal 
went on with his story with more alacrity 
than ever. 

THE STORY OF THE KING OF BOHEMIA AND 
HIS SEVEN CASTLES, CONTINUED. 

There was, an' please your Honor, said 
the Corporal, raising his voice and rubbing 
the palms of his two hands cheerly together 
as he began, a certain King of Bohemia, — 

— Leave out the date entirely, Trim, 
quoth my uncle Toby, leaning forwards, 
and laying his hand gently upon the Cor- 
poral's shoulder to temper the interruption, 
— leave it out entirely, Trim ; a story passes 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 23*. 

very well without these niceties, unlee* 
one is pretty sure of 'em. — Sure ol 'em • 
said the Corporal, shaking his head. 

— Right, answered my uncle Toby; it is 
not easy, Trim, for one, bred up as thoi* 
and I have been to arms, who seldom look? 
further forward than to the end of his mu? 
ket, or backwards beyond his knapsack, t< 
know much about this matter. — God bless 
your Honor ! said the Corporal, won by the 
manner of my uncle Toby's reasoning, as 
much as by the reasoning itself, he has 
something else to do ; if not in action, or 
on a march, or upon duty in his garrison, — 
he has his firelock, an' please your Honor, 
to furbish, — his accoutrements to take care 
of, — his regimentals to mend, — himself t«. 
shave and keep clean, so as to appear al 
ways like what he is upon the parade 
what business, added the Corporal triumph 
antly, has a soldier, an' please your Honor 
to know any thing at all of gcograplty ? 

— Thou would'st have said chronology. 
Trim, said my uncle Toby ; for as for ge- 
ography, 'tis of absolute use to him ; he 
must be acquainted intimately with every 
country and its boundaries where his pro- 
fession carries him ; he should know every 
town and city, and village and hamlet, with 
the canals, the roads, and hollow-ways, 
which lead up to them. There is not a 
river or a rivulet he passes, Trim, but he 
should be able, at first sight, to tell thee 
what is its name, — in what mountains 1: 
takes its rise, — what, is its course, — how far 
it is navigable, — where fordable, — where 
not; — he should know the fertility of every 
valley, as well as the hind who plows it ; 
and be able to describe, or. if it is required, 
to give thee an exact map of all the plain* 
and defiles, the forts, the acclivities, the 
woods and morasses, through and by which 
his army is to march ; he should know 
their produce, their plants, their minerals, 
their waters, their animals, their seasons, 
their climates, their heats and colds, their 
inhabitants, their customs, their language, 
their policy, and even their religion. 

Is it else to be conceived, Corporal, con 
tinued my uncle Toby, rising up in his sen- 
try-box as he began to warm in this part of 

his discourse, how Marlborough eould 

have marched his army from the banks or' 
the Maes to Belburg ; *rom Belburi: to Ker- 



238 



LIFE AND 



penord — (here the Corporal could sit no 
lunger) — from Kerpenord, Trim, to Kalsa- 
ken ; from Kalsaken to Newdorf ; from 
Newdorf to Landenbourg; from Landen- 
bourg to Mildenheim; from Mildenheim to 
Elchingen ; from Elchingen to Gingen ; 
from Gingen to Balmerchoffen ; from Bal- 
merehofren to Skellenburg, where he broke 
in upon the enemy's works, forced his pas- 
sage over the Danube, crossed the Lech, — 
push'd on his troops into the heart of the 
empire, marching at the head of them 
through Fribourg, Hokenwert and Schone- 
velt, to the plains of Blenheim and Hoch- 
stet 1 — Great as he was, Corporal, he could 
not have advanced a step, or made one sin- 
gle day's march, without the aids of Ge- 
ography. — As for Chronology, I own, Trim, 
continued my uncle Toby, sitting down 
again coolly in his sentry-box, that, of all 
others, it seems a science which the soldier 
might best spare, was it not for the lights 
which that science must one day give him, 
in determining the invention of powder ; 
the furious execution of which, renversing 
every thing, like thunder, before it, has be- 
come a new era to us of military improve- 
ments, changing so totally the nature of 
attacks and defences, both by sea and land, 
and awakening so much art and skill in 
doing it, that the world cannot be too exact 
in ascertaining the precise time of its dis- 
covery, or too inquisitive in knowing what 
great man was the discoverer, and what 
occasions gave birth to it. 

I am far from controverting, continued 
my uncle Toby, what historians agree in, 
that in the year of our Lord 1380, under 
the reign of Wencelaus, son of Charles the 
Fourth, — a certain priest, whose name was 
Schwartz, show'd the use of powder to the 
Venetians, in their wars against the Geno- 
ese ; but 'tis certain he was not the first ; 
because, if we are to believe Don Pedro, 
•he bishop of Leon, — How came priests and 
nishops, an' please your Honor, to trouble 
their heads so much about gunpowder? — 
God knows, said my uncle Toby, — his provi- 
dence brings good out of every thing — and 
ne avers, in his chronicle of King Alphon- 
eus, who reduced Toledo, that in the year 
1*143, which was full thirty-seven years 
In-fore that time, the secret of powder was 
«v»>L Known, and employed with success, 



OPINIONS 

both by Moors and Christians, not only in 
their sea-combats, at that period, but in 
many of their most memorable sieges in 
Spain and Barbary; — and all- the world 
knows, that Friar Bacon had wrote ex- 
pressly about it, and had generously given 
the world a receipt to make it by, above a 
hundred and fifty years before even Schwartz 
was born : — and that the Chinese, added my 
uncle Toby, embarrass us, and all accounts 
of it, still more, by boasting of the invention 
some hundreds of years even before him. — 

They are a pack of liars, I believe, cried 
Trim.— 

They are somehow or other deceived, 
said my uncle Toby, in this matter, as is 
plain to me from the present miserable state 
of military architecture amongst them ; 
which consists of nothing more than a 
fosse with a brick wall without flanks; — 
and for what they give us as a bastion at 
each angle of it, 'tis so barbarously con- 
structed, that it looks for all the world, — 
like one of my seven castles, an' pleast 
your Honor, quoth Trim. — 

My uncle Toby, though in the utmost dis- 
tress for a comparison, most courteously re- 
fused Trim's offer, — till Trim, telling him 
he had half a dozen more in Bohemia, 
which he knew not how to get off his hands, 
— my uncle Toby was so touch'd with the 
pleasantry of heart of the Corporal, — that 
he discontinued his dissertation upon gun- 
powder, — and begged the Corporal forth- 
with to go on with his story of the King of 
Bohemia and his seven castles. 

THE STORY OF THE KING OF BOHEMIA AND 
HIS SEVEN CASTLES, CONTINUED. 

This unfortunate King of Bohemia, said 
Trim, — Was he unfortunate, then ] cried 
my uncle Toby, for he had been so wrapt 
up in his dissertation upon gunpowder, and 
other military affairs, that though he nad 
desired the Corporal to go on, yet the many 
interruptions he had given, dwelt not so 
strong on his fancy as to account for the 
epithet. — Was he unfortunate, then, Trim , 
said my uncle Toby, pathetically. — The 
Corporal, wishing first the word and all its 
synonimas at the Devil, forthwith began to 
run back in his mind the principal evtnts 
in the King of Bohemia's story ; from every 
one of which, it appearing that he was Jie 
most fortunate man that ever existed i; 1 1<? 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



239 



world, — it put the Corporal to a stand; for| 
not caring to retract his epithet, — and less 
to explain it, — and least of all to twist his 
taie (like men of lore) to serve a system, — 
he looked up in my uncle Toby's face for 
assistance ; — but seeing 1 it was the very 
thing- my uncle Toby sat in expectation of 
himself, after a hum and a haw, he went 
on — 

The King of Bohemia, an' please your 
Honor, replied the Corporal, was unfortu- 
nate, as thus: — That taking 1 great pleasure 
and delight in navigation and all sort of sea 
affairs ; — and there happening throughout 
the whole kingdom of Bohemia to be no 
sea-port town whatever, — 

— How the deuce should there, Trim ? 
cried my unrle Toby; for Bohemia being 
totally inland, it could have happen'd no 
otherwise. 

— It might, said Trim, if it had pleased 
God.— 

My uncle Toby never spoke of the beinsr 
and natural attributes of God, but with dif- 
fidence and hesitation. — 

I believe not, replied my uncle Toby, 
after some pause ; — for being inland, as I 
said, and having Silesia and Moravia to the 
east: Lusatia and Upper Saxony to the 
north; Franconia to the west ; and Bavaria 
to the south, — Bohemia could not have been 
propell'd to the sea without ceasing to be 
Bohemia ; — nor could the sea, on the other 
hand, have come up to Bohemia, without 
overflowing a great part of Germany, and 
destroying millions of unfortunate inhabit- 
ants who could make no defence against it. 
— Scandalous, cried Trim. — Which would 
bespeak, added my uncle Toby, mildly, such 
a want of compassion in him who is the 
father of it, — that, I think, Trim, — the thing 
could have happen'd no way. — 

The Corporal made the bow of unfeign'd 
conviction, and went on. — 

Now the King of Bohemia, with his 
Queen and courtiers, happening one fine 
summer's evening to walk out, — Ay, there 
the word happening is right, Trim, cried 
my uncle Toby; for the King of Bohemia 
and his Queen might have walked out or 
let it alone : — 'twas a matter of contingency 
which might happen or not, just as chance 
urdered it. — 

King William was of an opinion, an' please 



your Honor, quoth Trim, that every thing 
was predestined for us in this world; inso- 
much, that he would often Bay t<> his sol- 
diers, that "every ball had its billet" — He 
was a great man, said my uncle Toby. — 
And I believe, continued Trim, to this day 
that the shot which disabled me at the bat- 
tle of Landen, was pointed at my knee for 
no other purpose but to take me out of his 
service, and place me in your Honor's 
where I should be taken so much bettor 
care of in my old age. — It shall never, 
Trim, be construed otherwise, said my un- 
cle Toby.— 

The heart, both of the master and the 
man, were alike subject to sudden overflow 
ings; — a short silence ensued. — 

Besides, said the Corporal, resuming the 
discourse, but in a gayer accent, — if it had 
not been for that single shot, I had never, 
an' please your Honor, been in love. — 

So thou wast once in love, Trim J said 
my uncle Toby, smiling. — 

Souse! replied the Corporal, — over hea/i 
and ears ! an' please your Honor. — Prithee, 
when] where] and how came it to pas? * 
— I never heard one word of it before, quotn 
my uncle Toby. — I dare say, answered 
Trim, that every drummer and Serjeants 
son in the regiment knew of it. — 'Tis hign 
time I should, — said my uncle Toby. — 

Your Honor remembers with concern, 
said the Corporal, the total rout and confu- 
sion of our camp and army at the affair of 
Landen : every one was left to shift for 
himself; and if it had not been for the regi- 
ments of Wyndham, Lumley, and Gal way. 
which covered the retreat over the bridge 
of Neerspeeken, the king himself could 
scarce have gained it ; — he was press'd hard, 
as your Honor knows, on every side of him. — 

Gallant mortal ! cried my uncle Toby v 
caught, with enthusiasm, this moment, now 
that all is lost, I see him galloping across 
me, Corporal, to the left, to bring up the 
remains of the English horse along with 
him, to support the right, and tear the laurel 
from Luxembourg's brows, if yet 'tis pos- 
sible: — I see him with the knot of his scarT 
just shot off, infusing fresh spirits into poor 
Gal way's regiment, — riding along u.^ line; 
— then wheeling about, and charging Conn 
at the head of it. — Brave! brave, by Hea- 
ven ! cried my uncle Toby ; he deserves a 



240 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



crown As richly, as a thief a halter, 

shouted Turn. 

My uncle Toby knew the Corporal's loy- 
alty — otherwise the comparison was not at 
all to his mind : — it did not altogether strike ; 
the Corporal's fancy when he had made it ; J 
— but it could not be recall'd ; so he had 
nothing to do, but proceed. 

As the number of wounded was pro- ' 
dio-ious, and no one had time to think of 
any thing but his own safety, — Though 
Talmash, said my uncle Toby, brought off j 
the foot with great prudence. — But I was 
left upon the field, said the Corporal. — Thou 
wast so, poor fellow ! replied my uncle | 
Toby. — So that it was noon the next day, I 
continued the Corporal, before I was ex- , 
changed, and put into a cart with thirteen ! 
or fourteen more, in order to be conveyed 
to our hospital. 

There is no part of the body, an' please 
your Honor, where a wound occasions more 
intolerable anguish than upon the knee. — 

Except the groin, said my uncle Toby. — 
An' please your Honor, replied the Corpo- 
ral, the knee, in my opinion, must certainly 
he the most acute, there being so many ten- 
dons and what-d'ye-call-'ems all about it. — 

It is for that reason, quoth my uncle Toby, 
that the groin is infinitely more sensible; — 
there being not only as many tendons and 
what-d'ye-call-'ems (for I know their names 
as little as thou dost) — about it, — but more- 
over,* * * — 

Mrs. Wadman, who had been all the time 
jn her arbor, — instantly stopp'd her breath, 
nnpinn'd her mob at the chin, and stood up 
upon one leg. 

The dispute was maintained with amica- 
ble and equal force betwixt my uncle Toby 
and Trim for some time ; till Trim at length 
recollecting that he had often cried at his 
masrer's sufferings, but never shed a tear at 
his own, — was for giving up the point; 
which my uncle Toby would not allow. — 
'Tis a proof of nothing, Trim, said^ he, but 
the generosity of thy temper. 

80 that whether the pain of a wound in 
the groin (ccetens paribus) is greater than 
the pain of a wound in the knee, — or 

Whether the pain of a wound in the knee 
is not greater than the pain of a wound in 
the groin, — are points which to this day re- 
main unsettled. 



CHAP. XX. 



The anguish of my knee, conti r ed the 
Corporal, was excessive in itself; and the 
uneasiness of the cart, with the roughness 
of the roads, which were terribly cut up, — 
making bad still worse. — every step was 
death to me ; so that with the loss of blood, 
and the want of care-taking of me, and a 
fever I felt coming on besides, — (Poor soul ! 
said my uncle Toby.) — All together, an* 
please your Honor, was more than I could 
sustain. 

I was telling my sufferings to a young 
woman at a peasant's house, where our cart, 
which was the last of the line, had halted ; 
they had help'd me in, and the young wo- 
man had taken a cordial out of her pocket 
anddropp'd it upon some sugar; and seeing 
it had cheer'd me, she had given it me a 
second and a third time. — So I was telling 
her, an' please your Honor, the anguish I 
was in, and was saying it was so intolerable 
to me, that I had much rather lie down 
upon the bed, turning my face towards one 
which was in the corner of the room, — and 
die, — than go on, — when, upon the attempt- 
ing to lead me to it, I fainted away in her 
arms. — She was a good soul ! as your Hon- 
or, said the Corporal, wiping his eyes, will 
hear. — 

I thought love had been a joyous thing, 
quoth my uncle Toby. — 

'Tis the most serious thing, an' please 
your Honor (sometimes) that is in the 
world. — 

By the persuasion of the young woman, 
continued the Corporal, the cart with the 
wounded men set off without me; she had 
assured them I should expire immediately 
if 1 was put into the cart. So when I came 
to myself, — I found myself in a still quiet 
cottage, with no one but the young woman, 
and the peasant and his wife. I was laid, 
across the bed in the corner of the room, 
with my wounded leg upon a chair, and the 
young woman beside me, holding the corner 
of her handkerchief dipp'ci in vinegar to my 
nose with one hand, and rubbing my tem- 
ples with the other. 

I took her at first for the daughter of the 
peasant (for it was no inn) ; — so had oTer'd 
her a little purse with eighteen florins, 
which my poor brother Tom (here Trim 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



241 



*ip'd his eyes) had sent me as a token, by 
a recn'it, just before he set out for Lisbon. 

I never told your Honor that piteous story 
yet, — (Here Trim wip'd his eyes a third 
time.) 

The young woman call'd the old man and 
his wife into the room to show them the 
money, in order to gain me credit for a bed 
and what little necessaries I should want, 
till I should be in a condition to be got to 
the hospital. — Come then, said she, tying up 
the little purse, — I'll be your banker; — but 
as that office alone will not keep me em- 
ploy'd, I'll be your nurse too. — 

I thought by her manner of speaking this, 
as well as by her dress, which I then began 
to consider more attentively, — that the 
young woman could not be the daughter of 
the peasant. 

She was in black down to her toes, with 
her hair concealed under a cambric border, 
laid close to her forehead : she was one of 
those kind of nuns, an' please your Honor, 
of which your Honor knows there are a 
good many in Flanders, which they let go 
'oose. — By thy description, Trim, said my 
..ncle Toby, I dare say she was a young 
Beguine, of which there are none to be 
found anywhere but in the Spanish Nether- 
lands, — except at Amsterdam: — they dif- 
fer from nuns in this, that they can quit 
their cloister if they choose to marry; they 
visit and take care of the sick by profession. 
I had rather, for my own part, they did it 
out of good-nature. — 

She often told me, quoth Trim, she did 
it for the love of Christ. — I did not like it. — 
1 believe, Trim, we are both wrong, said 
my uncle Toby: — we'll ask Mr. Yorick 
about it to-night, at my brother Shandy's ; 
so put me in mind, added my uncle Toby. — 

The young Beguine, continued the Cor- 
poral, had scarce given herself time to tell 
me, " she would be my nurse," when she 
nastily turned about to begin the office of 
one, and prepare something for me ; — and 
in a short time, — though I thought it a long 
one, — she came back with flannels, &c. &c. 
and having fomented my knee soundly for 
a couple of hours, &c. and made me a bason 
of thin gruel for my supper, — she wish'd 
me rest, and promised to be with me early 
'n he morning. — She wish'd me, an' please 
/our Honor, what was not to be had. — My 
2P 



fever ran very high that night ; — her figure 
made sad disturbance within me; — I wa« 
every moment cutting the world in two,— 
to give her half of it ; — and every moment 
was I crying, That I had nothing but a 
knapsack and eighteen florins to share with 
her. — The whole night long was the fair 
Beguine, like an angel, close by my bed- 
side, holding back my curtain, and offering 
me cordials; — and I was only awakened 
from my dream by her coming there at the 
hour promised, and giving them in reality. 
— In truth, she was scarce ever from me ; 
and so accustomed was I to receive life from 
her hands, that my heart sickened, and I 
lost color, when she left the room ; and yet, 
continued the Corporal (making one of the 
strangest reflections upon it, in the world) — 
" It was not love ;" — for during the three 
weeks she was almost constantly with me, 
fomenting my knee with her hand night 
and day, — I can honestly say, an' please 
your Honor, — that *********** 

'T- '"K -fc -> -£ -f* "f* •*• t* 'f' -F *T» OHf*f I, ,., 

That was very odd, Trim, quoth my unc»e 
Toby.— 

I think so too, — said Mrs. Wadman. 
It never did, said the Corporal. 



CHAP. XXT. 

— But 'tis no marvel, continued the Coi 
poral, — seeing my uncle Toby musing upon 
it, — for love, an' please your Honor, is ex- 
actly like war, in this; that a soldier, though 
he has escaped three weeks complete o 
Saturday night, — may, nevertheless, be shot 
through his heart on Sunday morning. — It 
happened so here, an' please your Honor, 
with this difference only, — that it was on 
Sunday in the afternoon, when 1 fWl in love, 
all at once with a sisserara. — It hurst upon 
me, an' please your Honor, like a bomb,- 
scarce giving me time to say, '* (Jod bless 
me."— 

I thought, Trim, said my uncle Toby, d 
man never fell in love so very suddenly. — 

Yes, an' please your Honor, if he is in the 
way of it, — replied Trim. 

I prithee, quoth my uncle Toby, inform 
me how this matter happened. — 
2J 



242 

With all pleasure, 
making a bow. 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



said the Corporal, 



CHAP. XXII. 

I had escaped, continued the Corporal, 
ah tnat time from falling- in love, and had 
fjone on to the end of the chapter, had it not 
been predestined otherwise. — There is no 
resisting our fate. — It was on a. Sunday, in 
the afternoon, as I told your Honor. 

The old man and his wife had walked 
out. — 

Every thing- was still and hush as mid- 
night about the house. 

There was not so much as a duck or a 
•duckling- about the yard, — 

When the fair Beg-uine came in to see 
me. 

My wound was then in a fair way of do- 
ing well, — the inflammation had been gone 
■ off for some time ; but it was succeeded with 
an itching both above and below my knee, 
so insufferable, that I had not shut my eyes 
the whole night for it. — 

Let me see it, said she, kneeling down 
upon the ground parallel to my knee, and 
laying her hand upon the part below it. — It 
only wants rubbing a little, said the Beguine ; 
so covering it with the bed-clothes, she be- 
gan with the fore-finger of her right hand 
to rub under my knee, guiding her fore-fin- 
ger backwards and forwards by the edge of 
the flannel which kept on the dressing. 

In five or six minutes I felt slightly the 
end of her second finger, and presently it 
was laid flat with the other, and she contin- 
ued rubbing in that way round and round 
tor a good while ; it then came into my head, 
that I should fall in love : — I blush'd when 
I saw how white a hand she had. — I shall 
never, an please your Honor, behold another 
hand so white whilst I live. — 

Not in that place, said my uncle Toby. — 

Though it was the most serious despair 
in nature to the Corporal, — he could not 
forbear smiling. — 

The young Beguine, continued the Cor- 
poral, perceiving it was of great service to 
me, — from rubbing for some time with two 
fir.gers, — proceeded to rub at length with 
iliree 



down the fourth, and then rubb'd with hei 
whole hand. I will never say another word, 
an' please your Honor, upon hands again ; — 
but it was softer than satin. — 

— Prithee, Trim, commend it as much as 
thou wilt, said my uncle Toby ; I shall hear 
thy story with the more delight. — The Cor- 
poral thank'd his master most unfeignedly ; 
but having nothing to say upon the Beguine's 
hand but the same over again, — he proceed- 
ed to the effects of it. 

The fair Beguine, said the Corporal, con- 
tinued rubbing with her whole hand under 
my knee, — till I fear'd her zeal would weary 
her. — "I would do a thousand times more," 
said she, "for the love of Christ." — In saying 
which, she pass'd her hand across the flan- 
nel, to the part above my knee, which I had 
equally complain'd of, and rubb'd it also. 

I perceived then, I was beginning to be 
in love. — 

As she continued rub-rub-rubbing, I felt 
it spread from under her hand, an' please 
your Honor, to every part of my frame. 

The more she rubb'd, and the longer 
strokes she took, the more the fire kindled 
in my veins, — till at length, by two or three 
strokes longer than the rest, my passion rose 
to the highest pitch. — I seiz'd her hand, — 

And then thou clapped'st it to thy lips, 
Trim, said my uncle Toby, and madest a 
speech. 

Whether the Corporal's amour termi- 
nated precisely in the way my uncle Toby 
described it, is not material ; it is enough that 
it contained in it the essence of all the love- 
romances which ever have been wrote since 
the beginning of the world. 



CHAP. XXIII. 

As soon as the Corporal had finished lh« 
story of his amour, — or rather my uncle 
Toby for him, — Mrs. Wadman silently sa.- 
lied forth from her arbor, replaced the pin 
in her mob, pass'd the wicker-gate, and ad- 
vanced slowly towards my uncle Toby's 
sentry-box : the disposition which Trim had 
made in my uncle Toby's mind, was too fa 
vorable a crisis to be let slip. 



— The attack was determin'd upon: it 
till by little and little she brought j was facilitated still more by mj uncle 



Toby's having ordered the Corporal to 
wheel off the pioneer's shovel, the spade, 
the pick-ax, the piquets, and other military 
stores which lay scatter'd upon the ground 
where Dunkirk stood. — The Corporal had 
march'd ; — the field was clear. 

Now, consider, Sir, what nonsense it is, 
either in fighting", or writing, or any thing 
else (whether in rhyme to it, or not) which 
a man has occasion to do, — to act by plan : 
for if ever Plan, independent of all circum- 
stances, deserved registering in letters of 
gold (I mean in the archives of Gotham) — 
it was certainly the Plan of Mrs. VV adman's 
attack of my uncle Toby in his sentry-box, 
by plan. — Now, the plan hanging up in it 
at Ihis juncture, being the plan of Dunkirk, 
— and the tale of Dunkirk a tale of relax- 
ation, it opposed every impression she could 
make : and, besides, could she have gone 
upon it, — the manoeuvre of fingers and 
hands in the attack of the sentry-box, was 
so outdone by that of the fair Beguine's, in 
Trim's story, — that just then, that particular 
attack, however successful before, — became 
the most heartless attack that could be 
made. 

O! let woman alone for this. Mrs. Wad- 
man had scarce open'd the wicker-gate, 
when her genius sported with the change 
of circumstances. 

She formed a new attack in a moment. 



CHAP. XXIV. 

— I am half distracted, Captain Shandy, 
said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambric 
handkerchief to her left eye, as she ap- 
proach'd the door of my uncle Toby's sentry- 
box ; a mote, — or sand, — or something, — I 
know not what, has got into this eye of 
mine; — do look into it: — it is not in the 
white. — 

In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged 
herself close in beside my uncle Toby, and 
squeezing herself down upon the corner of 
nis bench, she gave him an opportunity of 
doing it without rising up, — Do look into it, 
>»aid she. 

Honest soul ! thou didst look into it with 
as much innocency of heart as ever child 
look'd into a raree show-box; and 'twere 
as much a sin to have hurt thee. 



3TRAM SHANDY. 
If a man wil 



2-13 

be peeping of his r;wii ac- 
cord into things of that nature, I've nothing 
to say to it. 

My uncle Toby never did; and I w.i) 
answer for him, that he would have sa' 
quietly upon a sofa from June to January 
(which, you know, takes in both the hot une* 
cold months) with an eye as fine as tie' 
Thracian * Rhodope's beside him, without 
being able to tell whether it was a black cr 
a blue one. 

The difficulty was, to get my unc.e Toby 
to look at one at all. 

'Tis surmounted. And 

I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous 
in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it, 
— looking, — and looking, — then rubbing 
his eyes, — and looking again, with twice 
the good-nature that ever Galileo look'd for 
a spot in the sun. 

In vain ! for, by all the powers which ani- 
mate the organ, — Widow Wadman's left 
eye shines this moment as lucid as her 
right; — there is neither mote, nor sand, nor 
dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor particle of 
opake matter floating in it. — There is no- 
thing, my dear paternal uncle ! but one 
lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting 
out from every part of it, in all directions, 
into thine. 

If thou lookest, uncle Toby, in search of 
this mote one moment longer, thou art un- 
done. 



CHAP. XXV. 

An eye is, for all the world, exactly like 
a cannon, in this respect, That it is not so 
much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, 
as it is the carriage of the eye — and the 
carriage of the cannon; by which both the 
one and the other are enabled to do so much 
execution. I don't think the comparison a 
bad one: however, as 'tis made and placed 
at the head of the chapter, as much for use 
as ornament, all I desire in return, is, thai 
whenever I speak of Mrs. Wadman's eyes 
(except once in the next period) that vmi 
keep it in your fancy. 



♦RliodopeThracia tarn inevitahili fascino hist nu to. 
tain exact£ oculis intuena attraxit, ut si ;n illam quia 
incidiseet, fieri non posset, quin capcretur. — I KNOW 
NOT WHO. 



244 LIFE AND 

[ pro\est, Madam, said my uncle Toby, I 
can se-t nothing whatever in your eye. 

— It ip not in che white, said Mrs. Wad- 
man. — My uncle Toby look'd with might 
and main into the pupil. 

Now, of all the eyes which ever were 
created ; from your own, Madam, up to those 
of Venus herself, which certainly were as 
venereal a pair of eyes as ever stood in a 
head, there never was an eye of them all 
so fitted to rob my uncle Toby of his repose, 
as the very eye at which he was looking ; — 
it was not, Madam, a rolling eye, — a romp- 
ing, or a wanton one ; — nor was it an eye 
sparkling, petulant, or imperious, — of high 
claims and terrifying exactions, which would 
have curdled at once that milk of human 
nature, of which my uncle Toby was made 
up; — but 'twas an eye full of gentle salu 
tations, — and soft responses, — speaking, — 
not like the trumpet-stop of some ill-made 
organ, in which many an eye I talk to 
holds coarse converse, but whispering soft, 
--like the last low accents of an expiring 
saint, — " How can you live comfortless, 
"Captain Shandy, and alone, without a 
' bosom to lean your head on, — or trust 
'your cares to!" 

It was an eye 

But I shall be in love with it myself, if 
I say another word about it. 

It did my uncle Toby's business. 



CHAP. XXVI. 

There is nothing shows the characters 
of my father and my uncle Toby in a more 
entertaining light, than their different man- 
ner of deportment under the same accident; 
— for I call not love a misfortune ; from a 
persuasion, that a man's heart is ever the 
better for it. — Great God ! what must my 
uncle Toby's have been, when 'twas all be- 
nignity without it ! — 

My father, as appears from many of his 
papers, was very subject to this passion be- 
fore he married ; — but, from a little subacid 
kind of drollish impatience in his nature, 
whenever it befell him, he would never sub- 
mit to it like a Christian ; but would pish, 
and h'jff, and bounce, and kick, and play the 
Dm li, ano sprite the bitterest Philippics 



OPINIONS 

against the eye that ever man wrote • 
there is one in verse upon somebody's eye 
or other, that, for two or three nights to- 
gether, had put him by his rest ; which, in 
his firtt transport of resentment against it, 
he begins thus: — 

f A devil 'tis— and mischief such doth work 
" As never yet did Pagan, Jew, or Turk."* 

In short, during the whole paroxysm, my 
father was all abuse and foul language, ap- 
proaching rather towards malediction ; — 
only he did not do it with as much method 
as Ernulphus; — he was too impetuous; noi 
with Ernulphus's policy; — for though my 
father, with the most intolerant spirit, 
would curse both this and that, and every 
thing under Heaven, which was either aid- 
ing or abetting to his love, — yet he never 
concluded his chapter of curses upon it, 
without cursing himself in at the bargain, 
as one of the most egregious fools and cox- 
combs, he would say, that ever was let loose 
in the world. 

My uncle Toby, on the contrary, took it 
like a lamb, — sat still, and let the poison 
work in his veins without resistance; — in 
the sharpest exacerbations of his wound 
(like that on his groin) he never dropt one 
fretful or discontented word, — he blamed 
neither heaven nor earth, — nor thought, nor 
spoke an injurious thing of any body, or 
any part of it ; he sat solitary and pensive 
with his pipe, — looking at his lame leg, — 
then whirling out a sentimental heigh-ho ! 
which, mixing with the smoke, incommoded 
no one mortal. 

He took it like a lamb, I say. 

In truth, he had mistook it at first ; for, 
having taken a ride with my father that 
very morning, to save, if possible, a beau- 
tiful wood, which the dean and chapter 
were hewing down to give to the poor;f 
which said wood being in full view of my 
uncle Toby's house, and of singular service 
to him in his description of the battle of 
Wynnendale, — by trotting on too hastily tc 
save it, upon an uneasy saddle, worse horse, 
&c. &c. . . it had so happened, that the se- 
rous part of the blood had got betwixt the 
two skins, in the nethermost part of my un- 



* This will be printed with my father's Life o' 
Socrateb, &c. 

f Mr. Shandy must mean the poor in spirit! inas- 
much as they divided the money amongst themselves. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 

cie Toby, — the first shooting's of which (as| 
my uncle Toby hau no experience of love) 
he had taken tor a part of the passion, till 
the blister breaking in the one case, and 
the other remaining, my uncle Toby was 
presently convinced that his wound was 
not a skin-deep wound, but that it had gone 
tn his heart. 



24f> 



CHAP. XXVII. 

The world is ashamed of being virtuous. 
— My uncle Toby knew little of the world ; 
and therefore, when he felt he was in love 
with Widow Wadman, he had no concep- 
tion that the thing was any more to be 
made a mystery of, than if Mrs. Wadman 
had given him a cut with a gap'd knife 
across his finger. Had it been otherwise. — 
yet, as he ever look'd upon Trim as an 
humble friend, and saw fresh reasons every 
day of his life to treat -him as such, — it 
would have made no variation in the man- 
ner in which he informed him of the affair. 

" I am in love, Corporal !" quoth my un- 
cle Toby. 



CHAP. XXVIII. 



In love ! — said the Corporal, — your Honor 
was very well the day before yesterday, 
when I was telling your Honor the story of 
the King of Bohemia. — Bohemia ! said my 

uncle Toby musing a long time 

What became of that story, Trim ? 

— We lost it, an' please your Honor, 
somehow betwixt us; — but your Honor was 
as free from love then, as I am. — 'Twas 
just whilst thou went'st off with the wheel- 
barrow, — with Mrs. Wadman, quoth my 
uncle Toby. — She has left a ball here, 
added my uncle Toby, pointing to his breast. 

— She can no more, an' please your 
Honor, stand a siege, than she can fly, cried 
the Corporal. 

But as we are neighbors, Trim, the best 
«vay, I think, is to let her know it chilly 
first, quoth my uncle Toby. 

Now, if I might presume, said the Cor- 
#oraL, to differ from vour Honor, — 



Why else do I talk to thee, Trim ? said 
my uncle Toby, mildly. 

— Then I would begin, an' please your 
Honor, with making a good thundering at 
tack upon her, in return, — and telling her 
civilly afterwards; — for if she knows any 
thing of your Honor's being in love, be- 
forehand L — d help her!— she knows 

no more at present of it, Trim, said ray 
uncle Toby, — than the child unborn. 

Precious souls ! — 

Mrs. Wadman had told it, with all its 
circumstances, to Mrs. Bridget, twenty-four 
hours before ; and was, at that very moment, 
sitting in council with her, touching some 
slight misgivings with regard to the issue 
of the affair, which the Devil, who never 
lies dead in a ditch, had put into her head. 
— before* he would allow her half time to 
get quietly through her Te Deum. 

I am terribly afraid, said Widow Wad- 
man, in case I should marry him, Bridget, 
— that the poor Captain will not enjoy his 
health, with the monstrous wound upon his 
groin. 

— It may not, Madam, be so very large, 
replied Bridget, as you think; — and I be- 
lieve, besides, added she, — that 'tis dried up. 

— I could like to know, — merely for his 
sake, said Mrs. Wad man. 

— We'll know the long and the broad of 
it in ten days, answered Mrs. Bridget ; for 
whilst the Captain is paying his addresses 
to you, — I'm confident Mr. Trim will be 
for making love to me ; — and I'll let him as 
much as he will, added Bridget, to get it 
all out of him. 

The measures were taken at once ; — and 
my uncle Toby and the Corporal went on 
with theirs. 

Now, quoth the Corporal, setting his left 
hand a-kimbo, and giving such a flourish 
with his right, as just promised success, — 
and no more, — if your Honor will give me 
leave to lay down the plan of this attack. — 

Thou wilt please me by it, Trim, said my 
uncle Toby, exceedingly ; — and as I foresee 
thou must act in it as my aid-de-camp, here's 
a crown, Corporal, to begin with, to ste^p 
thy commission. 

— Then, an' please your Honor, said trie 
Corporal, (making a bow first for his cum 
mission) — we will begin with getting yaw 
Honor's laced clothes out of the great cao 
21* 



246 LIFE AND 

paign-trunk, to be well air'd, and have the 
biue and gold taken up at the sleeves; — and 
I'll put your white ramillie-wig fresh into 
pipes ; — and send for a taylor to have your 
Honor's thin scarlet breeches turn'd. — 

1 had better take the red plush ones, quoth 
my uncle Toby. — They will be too clumsy, 
said the Corporal. 



CHAP. XXIX. 

— Thou wilt get a brush and a little chalk 
to my sword. — 'Twill be only in your Hon- 
or's way, replied Trim. 



CHAP. XXX. 

— But your Honor's two razors shall be 
new set — and I will get my Montero-cap 
furbish'd up, and put on poor Lieutenant 
Le Fevre's regimental coat, which your 
Honor gave me to wear for his sake ; — and 
as soon as your Honor is clean shaved, — and 
has got your clean shirt on, with your blue 
and gold or your fine scarlet,— sometimes 
one and sometimes t'other, — and every thing 
is ready for the attack, — we'll march up 
boldly, as if 'twas to the face of a bastion ; 
and whilst your Honor engages Mrs. Wad- 
man in the parlor, to the right. — I'll attack 
Mrs. Bridget in the kitchen, to the left; and 
laving seiz'd that pass, I'll answer for it, 
said the Corporal, snapping his fingers over 
his head, — that the day is your own. 

— I wish I may but manage it right, said 
my uncle Toby ; — but I declare, Corporal, I 
had rather march up to the very edge of a 
trench. 

— A woman is quite a different thing, 
»«a id the Corporal. 

— I suppose so, quoth my uncle Toby. 



CHAP. XXXI. 

if any thing m this world which my 
father said, could have provoked my uncle 
Toby, during- the time he was in love, it 
was the perverse use my father was always 



OPINIONS 

making of an expression of Hilanon, tne 
hermit ; who, in speaking ot his abstinence, 
his watchings, flagellations, and other in- 
strumental parts of his religion, — would say 
— though with more facetiousness than be- 
came a hermit, "That they were the means 
" he used to make his ass (meaning his body") 
" leave off kicking." 

It pleased my father well ; it was not only 
a laconic way of expressing, — but of libel- 
ling, at the same time, the desires and appe- 
tites of the lower part of us ; so that for 
many years of my father's life, 'twas his 
constant mode of expression ; — he never 
used the word passions once, — but ass al- 
ways, instead of them ; — so that he might 
be said truly to have been upon the bones, 
or the back of his own ass, or else of some 
other man's, during all that time. 

I must here observe to you the difference 
betwixt 

My father's Ass and 
My Hobby-Horse, — in order to 
keep characters as separate as may be, in 
our fancies as we go along. 

For my Hobby-Horse, if you recollect a 
little, is no way a vicious beast; he has scarce 
one hair or lineament of the ass about him. 
— 'Tis the sporting little filly-folly which 
carries you out for the present hour, — a 
maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddle-stick, 
— an uncle Toby's siege, or an any thing 
which a man makes a shift to get astride 
on, to canter it away from the cares and so- 
licitudes of life. — 'Tis as useful a beast as 
is in the whole creation ; — nor do I really 
see how the world could do without it. 

— But for my father's ass. — Oh ! mount 
him, — mount him, — mount him, — (that's 
three times, is it not?) — mount him not: — 
'tis a beast concupiscent; — and foul befall 
the man who does not hinder him from 
kicking. 



CHAP. XXXII. 

Well, dear brother Toby, said my father, 
upon his first seeing him after he fell in 
love, — and how goes it with your Ass? 

Now, my unci J Toby thinking more of 
the part where he had had the blister, than 
of Hilarion's metaphor, — and c.ir precox « 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



247 



ccptions having (you know) as great a power 
over the sounds of words as the shapes of 
things, he had imagined that my father, 
who was not very ceremonious in his choice 
of words, had inquired after the part by its 
proper name: so, notwithstanding my mother, 
Dr. Slop, and Mr. Yorick, were sitting in 
the parlor, he thought it rather civil to 
conform to the term my father had made 
use of than not. When a man is hemm'd 
in by two indecorums, and must commit one 
of 'em, I always observe, — let him choose 
which he will, the world will blame him ; 
- -so I should not be astonish'd if it blames 
my uncle Toby. 

My a — e, quoth my uncle Toby, is much 
better, brother Shandy. — My father had 
formed great expectations from his Ass in 
this onset : and would have brought him 
on again ; but Doctor Slop setting up an in- 
temperate laugh, and my mother crying out 

Ii bless us ! — it drove my father's Ass 

off the field : — and the laugh then becoming 
general, — there was no bringing him back 
to the charge for some time : — 

And so the discourse went on without 
him. 

Every body, said my mother, says you are 
in love, brother Toby ; — and we hope it is 
true. 

I am as much in love, sister, I believe, 
replied my uncle Toby, as any man usually 
is. — Humph! said my father. — And when 
did you know it ! quoth my mother. 

— When the blister broke, replied my 
uncle Toby. 

My uncle Toby's reply put my father into 
good temper, — so he charged o' foot. 



CHAP. XXXIII. 



— A few children ! cried my father, rising 
out of his chair, and looking full in my 
mother's face, as he forced his way betwixt 
hers and Doctor Slop's, — a few children 1 
cried my father, repeating my uncle Toby'? 
words as he walked to and fro. 

Not, my dear brother Toby, cried my 
father, recovering himself all at once, and 
coming close up to the back of my uncle 
Toby's chair, — not that I should be sorry 
hadst thou a score: — on the contrary, 1 
should rejoice, — and be as kind, Toby, to 
every one of them as a father. — 

My uncle Toby stole his hand, unperceiv- 
ed, behind his chair, to give my father's a 
squeeze. — 

Nay, moreover continued he, keeping 
hold of my uncle Toby's hand, — so much 
dost thou possess, my dear Toby, of the milk 
of human nature, and so little of its asperi- 
ties, — 'tis piteous the world is not peopled 
by creatures which resemble thee ! and was 
I an Asiatic monarch, added my father, 
heating himself with his new project, — I 
would oblige thee, provided it would not 
impair thy strength, — or dry up thy radical 
moisture too fast, — or weaken thy memory, 
or fancy, brother Toby, which these gym- 
nics, inordinately taken, are apt to do, — 
else, dear Toby, I would procure thee the 
most beautiful women in my empire, and I 
would oblige thee, nolens volcns, to beget 
for me one subject every month. 

As my father pronounced the last word 
of the sentence, — my mother took a pinch 
of snuff. — 

Now I would not, quoth my uncle Toby, 
get a child, nolens volens, that is, whether 
I would or no, to please the greatest prince 
upon earth. — 

And 'twould be cruel in me, brother 
Toby, to compel thee, said my father; — but 



tis a case put, to show thee, that it is not 
As the ancients agree, brother Toby, said thy begetting a child, — in case thou should'st 

be able, — but the system of Love and Mar- 
riage thou goest upon, which I would set 
thee right in. — 

There is, at least, said Yorick, a grea. 
deal of reason and plain sense in Captain 
Shandy's opinion of love; and 'Lis amongst 
the ill-spent hours of my life, which I have 



my father, that there are two different and 
distinct kinds of love, according to the dif- 
ferent parts which are affected by it, — the 
brain or liver, — I think when a man is in 
".ove, it behoves him a little to consider 
which of the two he has fallen into. 

— What signifies it, brother Shandy, re- 
plied my uncle Toby, which of the two it is, 
providpd it will but make a man marry, and 
>ove his wife, and ge f a few children] 



to answer for, that I have read so many 
flourishing p ets and rhetoricians in my tiniH 
from whom I never could extract go mii( h. — 



2 18 LIFE AND 

I w ish, Yorick, said my father, you had 
read Plato: for there you would have learnt 
that there are two loves. — I know there 
were ♦ wo religions, replied Yorick, amongst 
tlie ancients ; — one for the vulgar, and an- 
other for the learned : — but I think one love 
might nave served both of them very well. — 

It could not, replied my father, — and for 
the same reasons ; for, of these loves, ac- 
cording to Ficinus's comment upon Velasius, 
the one is rational, — 

The other is natural; — 
the first ancient, — without mother, — where 
Venus had nothing to do ; the second begot- 
ten of Jupiter and Dione, — 

Pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, what 
has a man who believes in God to do with 
this? — My father could not stop to answer, 
for fear of breaking the thread of his dis- 
course. — 

This latter, continued he, partakes wholly 
of the nature of Venus. 

The first, which is the golden chain let 
down from Heaven, excites to love heroic, 
which comprehends in it, and excites to, the 
desire of philosophy and truth ; — the second 
excites to desire simply. — 

I. think the procreation of children as 
beneficial to the world, said Yorick, as the 
finding out the longitude. 

To be sure, said my mother, love keeps 
peace in the world. — 

In the house, — my dear, I own. — 

It replenishes the earth, said my mother. 

But it keeps Heaven empty, my dear, — 
replied my father. 

'Tis Virginity, cried Slop, triumphantly, 
which fills Paradise. — 

Well push'd, nun ! quoth my father. 



CHAP. XXXIV. 

My father had such a skirmishing, cut- 
ting kind of a slashing way with him in his 
disputations, thrusting and ripping, and 
g-iving everyone a stroke to remember him 
by, in his turn, that if there were twenty 
people in company, — in less than half an 
Sour he was sure to have every one ^f 'em 
Ejyainst him 



OPINIONS 

I What did not a little contribute to leave 
him thus without an ally, was, that if there 
was any one post more untenable than the 
rest, he would be sure to throw himself into 
it; and to do him justice, when he was once 
there, he would defend it so gallantly, that 
'twould have been a concern, either to a 
brave man, or a good-natured one, to hava 
seen him driven out. 

Yorick, for this reason, though he would 
often attack him, — yet could never bear to 
do it with all his force. 

Doctor Slop's Virginity, ir the close of 
the last chapter, had got him for once on 
the right side of the rampart ; and he was 
beginning to blow up all the convents in 
Christendom about Slop's ears, when Cor- 
poral Trim came into the parlor to inform 
my uncle Toby, that his thin scarlet breech- 
es, in which the attack was to be made 
upon Mrs. Wadman, would not do; for that 
the taylor, in ripping them up, in order to 
turn them, had found that they had been 
turn'd before. — Then turn them again, bro- 
ther, said my father, rapidly, for there will 
be many a turning of 'em yet before all's 
done in the affair. — They are as rotten as 
dirt, said the Corporal. — Then by all means, 
said my father, bespeak a new pair, brother ; 
— for though I know, continued my father, 
turning himself to the company, that Widow 
Wadman has been deeply in love with my 
brother Toby for many years, and has used 
every art and circumvention of woman to 
outwit him into the same passion, yet now 
that she has caught him, — her fever will be 
past its height. 

She has gained her point. 

In this case, continued my father, which 
Plato, I am persuaded, never thought of, — 
Love, you see, is not so much a sentiment 
as a situation,- into which a man enters, as 
my brother Toby would do into a corps, — 
no matter whether he loves the service or 
no; being once in it, — he acts as if he did, 
and takes every step to show himself a man 
of prowess. 

The hypothesis, like the rest of my fa- 
ther's, was plausible enough, and my uncle 
Toby had but a single word to object *o it, 
— in which Trim stood ready to second 
him; — but my father had not drawn his 
conclusion. — 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



240 



For this reason, continued my father, 
(stating the case over again) — notwith- 
standing all the world knows that Mrs. 
Wad man affects my brother Toby; — and 
my brother Toby contrariwise affects Mrs. 
Wadinan, and no obstacle in nature to for- 
bid the music striking up this very night, 
yet will I answer for it, that this self-same 
tune will not be play'd this twelvemonth. 

We have taken our measures badly, 
quoth my uncle Toby, looking up interroga- 
tively in Trim's face. — 

I would lay my Montero-cap, said Trim. — 

Now Trim's Montero-cap, as I once told 
you, was his constant wager ; and having 
furbish'd it up that very night, in order to 
go upon the attack, — it made the odds look 
more considerable. — I would lay, an' please 
your Honor, my Montero-cap to a shilling, 
— was it proper, continued Trim (making a 
bow) to offer a wager before your Honors. — 

There is nothing improper in it, said my 
father, — 'tis a mode of expression ; for in 
saying thou would'st lay thy Montero-cap 
to a shilling, — all thou meanest is this, — 
that thou belie vest, — 

Now, what dost thou believe 1 

That Widow Wad man, an' please your 
Worship, cannot hold it out ten days. — 

And whence, cried Slop, jeeringly, hast 
thou all this knowledge of woman, friend 1 — 

By falling in love with a popish clergy 
woman, said Trim. — 

'Twas a Beguine, said my uncle Toby. — 

Doctor Slop was too much in wrath to 
listen to the distinction; and my father 
taking that very crisis to fall in helter- 
skelter upon the whole order of Nuns and 
Beguines, a set of silly, fusty baggages, — 
Slop could not stand it; — and my uncle 
Toby having some measures to take about 
:is breeches, — and Yorick about his fourth 
general division, — in order for their several 
attacks next day, — the company broke up; 
and my father being left alone, and having 
naif an hour upon his hands betwixt that 
and bed-time, he called for pen, ink, and 
oaper, and wrote my uncle Toby the fol- 
lowing letter of instructions: 

My dear brother Toby, 
What I am going to say to thee, is upon 
•he nature of women, and of love-making 
to them ; and perhaps it is as well for thee, 
2G 



— though not so well for me, — that thou 
hast occasion for a letter of instructions 
upon that head, and that 1 am able to write 
it to thee. 

Had it been the good pleasure of Him 
who disposes of our lots, and thou no sufferer 
by the knowledge, I had been well content 
that thou should'st have dipp'd the pen this 
moment into the ink, instead of myse.f; but 
that not being the case, — Mrs. Shnndy be- 
ing now close beside me, preparing for bed, 
— I have thrown together, without »rder, 
and just as they have come into my mind, 
such hints and documents as I deem may 
be of use to thee, intending, in this, to give 
thee a token of my love; not doubting, my 
dear Toby, of the manner in which it will 
be accepted. 

In the first place, with regard to all 
which concerns religion in the affair, — 
though I perceive, from a glow in my 
cheek, that I blush as I begin to speak tn 
thee upon the subject, as well knowing 
notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how 
few of its offices thou neglectest, — yet I 
would remind thee of one (during the con 
tinuance of thy courtship) in a particular 
manner, which I would not have omitted ; 
and that is, never to go forth upon the en- 
terprise, whether it be in the morning or 
the afternoon, without first recommending 
thyself to the protection of Almighty God, 
that he may defend thee from the evil one. 

Shave the whole top of thy crown clean 
once at least every four or five days, but 
oftener if convenient; lest, in taking off 
thy wig before her, through absence of 
mind, she should be able to discover how 
much has been cut away by Time : — how 
much by Trim. 

'Twere better to keep ideas of baldness 
out of her fancy. 

Always carry it in thy mind, and act ujv.n 
it as a sure maxim, Toby, — 

" That women are timid ;" and 'tis well 
they are, — else there would be no dealing 
with them. 

Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang 
too loose about thy thighs, like the trunk- 
hose of our ancestors : 

A just medium prevents all conclusions. 

Whatever thou hast to say, be it more or 
less, forget not to utter it in a low soft tone 
of voice ;- —silence, and whatever approaches 



250 LIFE AND OPINIONS, &c 

it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into 
the brain ; for this cause, if thou canst help 
it. nevtr throw down the tongs and poker. 

Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and face 
tiousness in thy discourse with her, and do 
whatever lies in thy power, at the same 
time, to keep from her all books and wri- 
tings which tend thereto : there are some 
devotional tracts, which if thou canst en- 
tice her to read over, — it will be well ; but 
suffer her not to look into Rabelais, or 
Soarron, or Don Quixote : 

They are all books which excite laughter; 
and thou knowest, dear Toby, that there is 
no passion so serious as lust. 

Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, 
before thou entercst her parlor. 

And if thou art permitted to sit upon the 
same sofa with her, and she gives thee oc- 
casion to lay thy hand upon hers — beware 
;»f taking it; — thou canst not lay thy hand 
on hers, but she will feel the temper of 
thine. — Leave that and as many other 
things as thou canst, quite undetermined ; 
by so doing, thuu wilt have her curiosity 
on thy side; and if she is not conquered by 
that, and thy ass continues still kicking, 
which there is great reason to suppose, — 
thou must begin with first losing a few 
ounces of blood below the ears, according 
to the practice of the ancient Scythians, 
who cured the most intemperate fits of the 
appetite by that means. 

Avicenna, after this, is for having the 
part anointed with the syrup of hellebore, 
using proper evacuations and purges ; — and 
I believe rightly. — But thou must eat little 
or no goat's flesh, nor red deer ; — nor even 
foal's flesh by any means; — and carefully 
abstain, — that is, as much as thou canst, 
from peacocks, cranes, coots, didappers, and 
water-hens. 

As for thy drink, I need not tell thee, it 
must be the infusion of Vervain and the 
herb Hanea, of which ^Elian relates such 
effects; — but if thy stomach palls with it, 
— discontinue it from time to time, — taking 



cucumbers, melons, purslain, water-Jiiiu*, 
woodbine, and lettuce in the stead of them. 

There is nothing further for thee which 
occurs to me at present, 

Unless the breaking out of a fresh war 
— So wishing every thing, dear Toby, for 
the best, 

I rest thy affectionate brother, 

Walter Shandy. 



CHAP. XXXV. 

Whilst my father was writing his lettei 
of instructions, my uncle Toby and the 
Corporal were busy in preparing every 
thing for the attack. As the turning of the 
thin scarlet breeches was laid aside (at least 
for the present) there was nothing which 
should put it off beyond the next morning ; 
so, accordingly, it was resolved upon for 
eleven o'clock. 

Come, my dear, said my father to my 
mother, 'twill be but like a brother and 
sister, if you and I take a walk down to my 
brother Toby's, — to countenance him in 
this attack of his. 

My uncle Toby and the Corporal had 
both been accoutred some time, when my 
father and mother enter'd, and the clock 
striking eleven, were that moment in mo- 
tion to sally forth ; — but the account of this 
is worth more than to be wove into the fag- 
end of the eighth* volume of such a work 
as this. — My father had no time but to put 
the letter of instructions into my uncle 
Toby's coat-pocket, and join with my mo- 
ther in wishing his attack prosperous. 

I could like, said my mother, to look 
through the key-hole, out of curiosity. — 
Call it by its right name, my dear, quoth 
my father, — 

And look through the key-hole as long 
as you will. 



Alluding to the first edition. 



DEDICATION 



TO 



A GREAT MAN 



Hititto, ie priori, intended to dedicate 
The Amours of my uncle Toby to Mr. * * *, 
— I see more reasons, a posteriori, for doing- 
it to Lord * * * * * * * 

I should lament from my soul, if this ex- 
posed me to the jealousy of their Rever- 
ences: because, a posteriori, in Court Latin, 
signifies the kissing hands for preferment, 
— or any thing else,— in order to get i\ 

My opinion of Lord ******* j s neither 
better nor worse than it was of Mr. * * *. 
Honors, like impressions upon coin, may give 
an ideal and local value to a bit of base 
metal ; but gold and silver will pass all the 
world over, without any other recommenda- 
tion than their own weight. 

The same good-will that made me think 
of offering up half an hour's amusement to 
Mr. * * * when out of place, operates more 
forcibly at present, as half an hour's amuse- 
ment will be more serviceable and refresh- 
jig after labor and sorrow, that after a phi- 
losophical repast. 

Ni thing is so perfectly amusement as a 



total change of ideas; no ideas are so rota II v 
different as those of Ministers and innocent 
Lovers: for which reason, when I come to 
talk of Statesmen and Patriots, and set 
such marks upon them as will prevent con- 
fusion and mistake concerning them for the 
future, — I propose to dedicate that volume 
to some gentle Shepherd, 

Whose thoughts proud Science never taught to stiay, 
Far as the Statesman's walk or Patriot's way; 
Yet simple Nature to his hopes had given, 
Out of a cloud-capp'd hill, an humbler heaven ; 
Some uutam'U World in depth of woods einhrac'd — 
Some happier Island in the waft y waste — 
And where, admitted to that equal sky, 
His faithful Dog shall bear him company. 

In a word, by thus introducing an entire 
new set of objects to his imagination, 1 
shall unavoidably give a Diversion to his 
passionate and love-sick contemplations. Lk 
the mean time, 

I am 

^ue Author. 



THE 

LIFE AND OPINIONS 

OP 

ffrifttram Sftauira, 

GENTLEMAN. 



CHAP. I. 

I CALL all the powers of time and chance, 
which severally check us in our careers in 
this world, to bear me witness, that I could 
never yet get fairly to my uncle Toby's 
amours, till this very moment, that my mo- 
ther's curiosity, as she stated the affair, — or! 
a different impulse in her, as my father 
would have it, — wished her to take a peep 
at them through the key-hole. 

" Call it, my dear, by its right name," 
quoth my father, "and look through the 
key-hole as long as you will." 

Nothing but the fermentation of that little 
eubacid humor, which I have often spoken 
of, in my father's habit, could have vented 
such an insinuation; — he was, however, 
frank and generous in his nature, and at all 
times open to conviction ; so that he had 
scarce got to the last word of this ungra- 
cious retort, when his conscience smote 
mm. 

My mother was then conjugally swinging 
with her left arm twisted under his right, 
in such wise, that the inside of her hand 
rested upon the back of his; — she raised her 
ingers, and let them fall, — it could scarce 
ne called a tap ; or, if it was a tap, — 'twould 
have puzzled a casuist to say, whether 'twas 
a tap of remonstrance or a tap of confession ; 
my father, who was all sensibilities from 
head to foot, class'd it right; — Conscience 
redoubled her blow, — he turn'd his face sud- 
denly the other way, and my mother, sup- 
nosing his bodv was about to turn with it, 
u order to move homewards, by a cross- 
movement of her right leg, keeping her left 
ju i*s centre, brought herself so far in front, 
Jiat, ?s he turned his head, he met her eye: 



[ — Confusion again ! he saw a thousand rea 
sons to wipe out the reproach, and as many 
to reproach himself: — a thin, blue, chill, pel- 
lucid crystal, with all its humors so at rest, 
the least mote or speck of desire might have 
been seen at the bottom of it, had it exist- 
ed ; — it did not : — and how I happen to be so 
iewd myself, particularly a little before the 
vernal and autumnal equinoxes, — Heaven 
above knows; — my mother, Madam, was so 
at no time, either by nature, by institution, 
or example. • 

A temperate current of blood ran orderly 
through her veins in all months of the year, 
and in all critical moments both of the day 
and night alike ; nor did she superinduce 
the least heat into her humors from the 
manual effervescences of devotional tracts, 
which, having little or no meaning in them, 
nature is oftentimes obliged to find one ; and, 
as for my father's example ! 'twas so far 
from being either aiding or abetting there- 
unto, that 'twas the whole business of his 
life to keep all fancies of that kind out of 
her head ; — Nature had done her part to 
have spared him this trouble ; and, what was 
not a little inconsistent, my father knew it. 
— And here ami sitting, this 12th day of 
August, 1766, in a purple jerkin and yellow 
pair of slippers, without either wig or cap 
on, a most tragi-comical completion of his 
prediction, " That I should neither think nor 
" act like any other man's child, upon that 
" very account." 

The mistake of my father was, in attack- 
ing my mother's motive instead of the act 
itself; for, certainly, key-holes were made 
for other purposes; and, considering the act 
as an act which interfered with a true propo- 
sition, and denied a key-hole to be what i 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



253 



was, — it became a violation of nature ; and 
was so tar, you see, criminal. 

It is for this reason, an' please your Rev- 
erences, that key-holes are the occasions of 
more sin and wickedness than all the other 
holes in this world put together: 

— Which leads me to my uncle Toby's 
amours. 



CHAP. II. 

Though the Corporal had been as good 
is his word in putting my uncle Toby's 
great ramillie-wig into pipes, yet the time 
was too short to produce any great effects 
from it: it had lain many years squeezed 
up in the corner of his old campaign-trunk; 
and as bad forms are not so easy to be got 
the better of, and the use of candle-ends not 
so well understood, it was not so pliable a 
business as one would have wished. The 
Corporal, with cheery eye and both arms ex- 
tended, had fallen back perpendicular from 
it a score of times, to inspire it, if possible, 
with a better air : — had Spleen given a look 
at it, 'twould have cost her ladyship a smile; 
— it curl'd everywhere but where the Cor- 
poral would have it ; and where a buckle or 
two, in his opinion, would have done it honor, 
he could as soon have raised the dead. 

Such it was, — or, rather, such would it 
have seem'd upon any other brow; — but the 
sweet look of goodness which sat upon my 
uncle Toby's assimilated every thing around 
it so sovereignly to itself, and Nature had, 
moreover, wrote Gentleman with so fair a 
hand in every line of his countenance, that 
even his tarnish'd gold-lac'd hat and huge 
cockade of flimsy taffety became him ; and, 
though not worth a button in themselves, 
yet the moment my uncle Toby put them 
on, they became serious objects, and, alto- 
gether, seem'd to have been picked up by 
the hand of Science to set him off to advan- 
tage. 

Nothing in this world could have co-ope- 
ra ted more powerfully towards this, than 
my uncle Toby's blue and gold, — had not 
Quantity, in some measure, been necessary 
to Grace. In a period of- fifteen or sixteen 
years since they had been made, by a total 
inactivity in my uncle Toby's life (for he 



seldom went farther than the bowl ing-green) 
— his blue and gold had become bo miser- 
ably too strait for him, that it. was with 
the utmost difficulty the Corporal was able 
to get him into them; the taking them up 
at the sleeves was of no advantage : they 
were laced, however, down the back, and 
at the seams of the sides, &c. in the mode 
of King William's reign ; and to shorten all 
description, they shone so bright against 
the sun that morning, and had so metallic 
and doughty an air with them, that, had 
my uncle Toby thought of attacking in 
armor, nothing could have so well imposed 
upon his imagination. 

As for the thin scarlet breeches, they had 
been unripp'd by the taylor between the 
legs, and left at sixes and sevens. 

— Yes, Madam ; but let us govern our 
fancies. It is enough they were held im- 
practicable the niglu before; and. as there 
was no alternative in my uncle Toby's 
wardrobe, he sallied forth in the red plush. 

The Corporal had -array'd himself in poor 
Le Fevre's regimental coat; and with his 
hair tuck'd up under his Montero-cap, which 
he had furbish'd up for the occasion, march'd 
three paces distant from his master: a whiff 
of military pride had pufTd out his shirt at 
the wrist; and upon that, in a black leather 
thong clipp'd into a tassel beyond the knot, 
hung the Corporal's stick. — My uncle Toby 
carried his cane like a pipe. 

— It looks well, at least, quoth my father 
to himself. 



CHAP. III. 



My uncle Toby turned his head more 
than once behind him, to see how he was 
supported by the Corporal ; and the Cor- 
poral, as oft as he did it, gave a slight flour- 
ish with his stick, — but not vaporingly ; and 
with the sweetest accent of most respectful 
encouragement, bid his Honor "never fear." 

Now my uncle Toby did fear, and griev- 
ously too; he knew not (as my father ha v 
reproach'd him) so much as the light end 
of a woman from the wrong, and therefore, 
was never altogether at his ease near any 
one of them, — unless in sorrow or distress* 
then infinite was his pity ; nor would the 
•22 



254 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



most courteous knight of romance have 
gone furtner, at least upon one leg, to have 
wiped away a tear from a woman's eye; 
and yet, excepting once that he was be- 
guiled into it by Mrs. Wad man, he had 
never looked stedfastly into one; and would 
often tell my father, in the simplicity of his 
heart, that it was almost (if not about) as 
bad as talking bawdy. 

— And suppose it is] my father would 
say. 



CHAP. IV. 

She cannot, quoth my uncle Toby, halt- 
ing, when they had march'd up to within 
twenty paces of Mrs. Wadman's door, — 
she cannot, Corporal, take it amiss. 

— She will take it, an' please your Honor, 
said the Corporal, just as the Jew's widow 
at Lisbon took it of my brother Tom. 

— And how was that? quoth my uncle 
Toby, facing quite about to the Corporal. 

Your Honor, replied the Corporal, knows 
of Tom's misfortunes ; but this affair has 
nothing to do with them any further than 
this, That if Tom had not married the 
widow, — or had it pleased God, after their 
marriage, that they had but put pork into 
their sausages,the honest soul had never been 
taken out of tris warm bed, and dragg'd to 
the Inquisition ; — 'tis a cursed place, added 
the Corporal, shaking his head ; when once 
a poor creature is in, he is in, an' please 
your Honor, for ever. 

— 'Tis very true, said my uncle Toby, 
looking gravely at Mrs. Wadman's house 
as he spoke. 

— Nothing, continued the Corporal, can 
be so sad as confinement for life, — or so 
wweet, an' please your Honor, as liberty. 

— Nothing, Trim, said my uncle Toby, 
musing. 

— Whilst a man is free, cried the Cor- 
poral, giving a flourish with his stick thus : — 




A thousand of my father's most, subtle 
(.yllogisms could not have said more for 
v-»'libai/v r . 



My uncle Toby look'd earnestly 10 wards 
his cottage and his bowling-green. 

The Corpora] had unwarily conjured up 
the Spirit of calculation with his wand ; 
and he had nothing to do but to conjure 
him down again with his story ; and in thie 
form of exorcism, most unecclesiasticalH 
did the Corporal do it. 



CHAP. V. 



As Tom's place, an' please your Honor, 
was easy, and the weather warm, it put 
him upon thinking seriously of settling him- 
self in the world, and as it fell out about 
that time, that a Jew, who kept a sausage- 
shop in the same street, had the ill-luck to 
die of a stranguary, and leave his widow in 
possession of a rousing trade, — Tom thought 
(as every body in Lisbon was doing the 
best he could devise for himself) there could 
be no harm in offering her his service to 
carry it on ; so without any introduction to 
the widow, except that of buying a pound 
of sausages at her shop, — Tom set out, — 
counting the matter thus within himself as 
he walk'd along : — That, let the worst come 
of it that could, he should, at least, get a 
pound of sausages for their worth; — but, if 
things went well, he should be set up; in- 
asmuch as he should get not only a pound 
of sausages, — but a wife and a sausage- 
shop, an' please your Honor, into the bar- 
gain. 

Every servant in the family, from high to 
low, wish'd Tom success; and I can fancy, 
an' please your Honor, I see him this mo- 
ment with his white dimity waistcoat and 
breeches, and hat a little o' one side, pass- 
ing jollily along the street, swinging his 
stick, with a smile and a cheerful word for 
every body he met. — But, alas ! Tom ! thou 
smilest no more, cried the Corporal, looking 
on one side of him upon the ground, as if 
he apostrophized him in his dungeon. 

— Poor fellow ! said my uncle Toby, 
feelingly. 

— He was an honest, light-hearted lad, 
an' please your Honor, as ever blood 
vvarm'd. 

— Then he resembled thee, Trim, said 
my uncle Toby, rapidly. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

The Corporal blush'd down to his fingers' 
•,-nds, — a tear of sentimental bashful ness, — 
another of gratitude to my uncle Toby, — 
and a tear of sorrow for his brother's mis- 
fortunes, started into his eye, and ran 
sweetly down his cheek together. — My 
uncle Toby's kindled as one lamp does at 
another ; and taking hold of the breast of 
Trim's coat, (which had been that of Le 
Fevre's) as if to ease his lame leg, but in 
reality to gratify a finer feeling, — he stood 
silent for a minute and a half; at the end 
of which he took his hand away, and the 
Corporal, making a bcw, went on witn his 
6tory of Ins brother and the Jew's widow. 



255 



CHAP. VI. 



When Tom, an' please your Honor, got 
to the shop, there was nobody in it but a 
poor negro girl, with a bunch of white 
feathers slightly tied to the end of a long 
cane, flapping away flies, — not killing them. 
— 'Tis a pretty picture ! said my uncle 
Toby; — she had suffered persecution, Trim, 
and had learnt mercy. 

— She was good, an' please your Honor, 
from nature, as well as from hardships; and 
there are circumstances in the story of that 
poor friendless slut, that would melt a heart 
of stone, said Trim; and some dismal 
winter's evening, when your Honor is in the 
humor, they shall be told you with the rest 
of Tom's story, for it makes a part of it. 

-Then do not forget, Trim, said my uncle 
Toby. 

— A negro has a soul ! an' please your 
Honor, said the Corporal (doubtingly). 

— I am not much versed, Corporal, quoth 
my uncle Toby, in things of that kind ; but 
I suppose, God would not leave him with- 
out one, any more than thee or me. 

— It would be putting one sadly over the 
head of another, quoth the Corporal. 

It would so, said my uncle Toby. — Why 
then, an' please your Honor, is a black 
wench to be used worse than a white one? 

— I can give no reason, said my uncle 
Toby. 

— Only, cried the Corporal, shaking his 
head, because she lias no one to stand up 
for her. 



lay- 
and 



— 'Tis that very thing, Trim, quoth my 
uncle Toby, — which recommends her to 
protection, — and her brethren with her; 'Ua 
the fortune of war which has put tne whip 
into our hands now; — where it may be 
hereafter, Heaven knows ! but be it where 
it will, the brave, Trim, will not use it un- 
kindly. 

— God forbid ! said the Corporal. 

— Amen, responded my uncle Toby, 
ing his hand upon his heart. 

The Corporal returned to his story, 
went on, — but with an embarrassment in 
doing it, which here and there a reader in 
this world will not be able to comprehend ; 
for by the many sudden transitions all along, 
from one kind and cordial passion to an- 
other, in getting thus far on his way, he 
had lost the sportable key of his voice, 
which gave sense and spirit to his tale: he 
attempted twice to resume it, but could not 
please himself; so giving a stout hem! to 
rally back the retreating spirits, and aiding 
nature at the same time, with his left arm 
a-kimbo on one side, and with his right a 
little extended, supporting her on the other, 
— the Corporal got as near the note as he 
could ; — and in that attitude continued his 
story. 



CHAP. VII. 

As Tom, an' please your Honor, had no 
business at that time with the Moorish 
girl, he passed on into the room beyond, tc 
talk to the Jew's widow about love, — and 
his pound of sausages; and being, as I have 
told your Honor, an open cheery-hearted 
lad, with his character wrote in his looks 
and carriage, he took a chair, and without 
much apology, but with great civility a* the 
same time, placed it close to her at the 
table, and sat down. 

There is nothing so awkward as courting 
a woman, an' please your Honor, whilar. 
she is making sausages. — So Tom began a 
discourse upon them : First, gravely, — "An 
"how they were made; — with what meat*, 
" herbs, and spices:" — then a little gaily,— 
as, " With what skins, — and if they neve% 
"burst] — Whether the largest were not 



256 LIFE AND OPINIONS 

"the bestl" and so on, — taking- care only 
as he went along-, to season what he had to 
say upon sausages, rather under than over, 
—that he might have room to act in. — 

It was owing to the neglect of that very 
precaution, said my uncle Toby, laying his 
hand upon Trim's shoulder, that Count de 
la Motte lost the battle of Wynnendale: he 
pressed too speedily into the wood: which if 
he had not done, Lisle had not fallen into 
our hands, nor Ghent and Bruges ; which 
both followed her example. — It was so late 
in the year, continued my uncle Toby, and 
so terrible a season came on, that if things 
had not fallen out as they did, our troops 
must have perish'd in the open field. 

— Why, therefore, may not battles, an' 
please your Honor, as well as marriages, 
be made in Heaven ? — My uncle Toby 
mused. — Religion inclined him to say one 
thing, and his high idea of military skill 
tempted him to say another : so, not being 
able to frame a reply exactly to his mind, 
— my uncle Toby said nothing at all; and 
the Corporal finished his story. 

As Tom perceived, an' please your Honor, 
that he gained ground, and that all he had 
said upon the subject of sausages was kindly 
taken, he went on to help her a little in 
making them. — First, by taking hold of the 
ring of the sausage whilst she stroked the 
forced meat down with her hand ; — then by 
cutting the strings into proper lengths, and 
holding them in his hand, whilst she took 
them out, one by one ; — then by putting 
them across her mouth, that she might take 
them out as she wanted them, — and so on 
from little to more, till at last he adventured 
to tie the sausage himself, whilst she held 
the snout. 

Now a widow, an' please your Honor, 
always chooses a second husband as unlike 
the first as she can : so the affair was more 
than half settled in her mind before Tom 
mentioned it. 

She made a feint, however, of defending 
herself by snatching up a sausage. — Tom 
instantly laid hold of another. — 

But seeing Tom's had irv^ie gristle in it, — 

She signed the capLulation, — and Tom 
coaled it; and there was an end of the 
matter. 



CHAP. VTIL 



All womankind, continued Ti-rm (com- 
menting upon his story) from the highest 
to the lowest, an' please your Honor, love 
jokes; the difficulty is to know how they 
choose to have them cut; and there is no 
knowing- that but by trying, as we do with 
our artillery in the field, by raising- or let 
ting down their breeches, till we hit the 
mark. 

— I like the comparison, said my uncle 
Toby, better than the thing itself. 

— Because your Honor, quoth the Corpo- 
ral, loves glory more than pleasure. 

— I hope, Trim, answered my uncle 
Toby, I love mankind more than either; 
and as the knowledge of arms tends so ap- 
parently to the good and quiet of the world, 
— and particularly that branch of it which 
we have practised together in our bowling- 
green, has no object but to shorten the strides 
of Ambition, and intrench the lives and for- 
tunes of the few from the plunderings of the 
many; — whenever that drumbeats in our 
ears, I trust, Corporal, we shall neither of 
us want so much humanity and fellow-feel- 
ing as to face about and march. 

In pronouncing this, my uncle Toby faced 
about and march'd firmly as at the head of 
his company; — and the faithful Corporal, 
shouldering his stick, and striking his hand 
upon his coat-skirt as he took his first step, 
— march'd close behind him down the 
avenue. 

— Now what can their two noddles be 
about? cried my father to my mother. — By 
all that's strange, they are besieging Mrs. 
Wadman in form, and are marching round 
her house to mark out the lines of circum 
vallation ! 

— I dare say, quoth my mother, — But 
stop, dear Sir, — for what my mother dared 
to say upon the occasion, — and what my 
father did say upon it, — with her replies and 
his rejoinders, shall be read, perused, para- 
phrased, commented, and descanted upon, 
— or to say it all in a word, shall be thumb'ri 
over by Posterity in a chapter apart ; I say, 
by Posterity, — and care not, if I repeat the 
word again, — for what has this book done 
more than the Legation of Moses or tbo 






Tale of a Tub. that it may not swim down 
the gutter of Time along with them J 

I will not argue the matter: Time wastes 
too last: every letter I trace tells me with 
what rapidity Life follows my pen ; the days 
and hours of it, more precious, — my dear 
Jenny, — than the rubies about thy neck, are 
flying over our heads like light clouds of a 
windy day, never to return more ; — every 
thing presses on, — whilst thou art twisting 
that lock, — see ! it grows grey ; and every 
time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every 
absence which follows it, are preludes to that 
eternal separation which we are shortly to 
make. — 

Heaven have mercy upon us both ! 



CHAP. IX. 



Now for what the world thinks of that 
ejaculation, — I would not give a groat 



CHAP. X. 



My mother had gone with her left arm 
twisted in my father's right, till they had 
got to the fatal angle of the old garden-wall, 
where Doctor Slop was overthrown by Oba- 
diah on the coach-horse. As this was directly 
opposite to the front of Mrs. Wadman's 
house, when my father came to it, he gave 
a look across ; and seeing my uncle Toby 
and the Corporal within ten paces of the 
door, he turn'd about, — " Let us just stop a 
" moment," quoth my father, " and see with 
" what ceremonies my brother Toby and his 
" man Trim make their first entry ; — it will 
" not detain us," added my father, " a sin- 
•* gle minute." 

— No matter if it be ten minutes, quoth 
my mother. 

—It will not detain us half a one, said my 
father. 

The Corporal was just then setting in 
with the story of his brother Tom and the 
Jew's widow : the story went on, — and on ; 
— it had episodes in it,— -it came back and 
went on, — and on again ; there was no end 
of it : — the reader found it very long. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 257 

at every new attitude, and gave the Corpo- 
ral's stick, with all its flourishings and dang- 
lings, to as many Devils as chose to accept 
of them. 

When issues of events like these my 
father is waiting for, are hanging in the 
scales of fate, the mind has the advantage 
of changing the principle of expectation 
three times, without which it would not 
have power to see it out. 

Curiosity governs the first moment ; and 
the second moment is all economy to justify 
the expense of the first; — and for the third, 
fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on 
to the day of judgment, — 'tis a point of 
Honor. 

I need not be told, that the ethic writers 
have assigned this all to Patience ; but that 
Virtue, methinks, has extent of dominion 
sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, 
without invading the few dismantled castlea 
which Honor has left him upon the earth. 

My father stood it out as well as he could 
with these three auxiliaries, to the end of 
Trim's story; and from thence to the end 
of my uncle Toby's panegyric upon arms, 
in the chapter following it ; when seeing 
that, instead of marching up to Mrs. Wad- 
man's door, they both faced about and 
march'd down the avenue diametrically cp- 
posite to his expectation, — he broke out at 
once with that little subacid sourness of 
humor, which, in certain situations, dis- 
tinguished his character from that of all 
other men. 



CHAP. XI. 



" Now what can their two noddles be 
about?" cried my father, - - &c. 

— I dare say, said my mother, they die 
making fortifications. 

— Not on Mrs. Wadman's premises* 
cried my father, stepping back. 

— I suppose not, quoth my mother. 

— I wish, said my father, raising his voice, 
the whole science of fortification at the 
Devil, with all its trumpery of saps, minesj 
blinds, gabions, faussebrays, and cuvettes. 

— They are foolish things, said my mother. 



Now she had a way, which, by the hve, 
G — help my father ! he pisWd fifty times [ I would this moment give away my purrie 



2 H 



22 1 



258 LIFE AND 

jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bar- 
gain, if some of your Reverences would 
imitate, — and that was, never to refuse her 
assent and consent to any proposition my 
father laid before her, merely because she 
did not understand it, or had no ideas of the 
principal word or term of art upon which 
the tenet or proposition rolled. She con- 
tented herself with doing all that her god- 
fathers and godmothers promised for her, — 
but no more ; and so would go on using a 
hard word for twenty years together, — and 
replying to it too, if it was a verb, in all its 
moods and tenses, without giving herself 
any trouble to inquire about it. 

This was an eternal source of misery to 
my father, and broke the neck, at the first 
setting out, of more good dialogues between 
them, than could have done the most petu- 
lant contradiction ; — the few that survived 
were the better for the cuvettes. 

"They are foolish things," said my mo- 
ther. 

— Particularly the cuvettes, replied my 
• fiith er. 

It was enough ; — he tasted the sweet of 
triumph, — and went on. 

— Not that they are, properly speaking, 
Mrs. Wadman's premises, said my father, 
partly correcting himself, — because she is 
but tenant for life. 

— That makes a great difference — said 
my mother. 

In a fool's head, replied my father. 

— Unless she should happen to have a 
child, said my mother. 

— But she must persuade my brother 
Toby first to get her one. 

— To be sure, Mr. Shandy, quoth my 
mother. 

— Though if it comes to persuasion, said 
my father, — Lord have mercy upon them ! 

— Amen, said my mother, piano. 

Amen, cried my father, fortissimo. 
— Amen, said my mother again, — but 
witn such a sighing cadence of personal 
pitv at tne end of it, as discomfited every 
fibre aoout my father; — he instantly took 
out his almanac ; — but before he could un- 
tie it, Yorick's congregation coming out of 
church, became a full answer to one half 
uf his business with it, — ana my mother 
telling him i* was l sacrament day, — left 



OPINIONS 

him as little in doubt, as to the other part • 
He put his almanac into his pocket. 

The First Lord of* the Treasury, thinjr 
ing of ways and means, could not have re 
turned home with a more embarrassed iooA 



CHAP. XII. 

Upon looking back from th* end of th<* 
last chapter, and surveying the texture of 
what has been wrote, it is necessary, that 
upon this page and the five following, a 
good quantity of heterogeneous matter be 
inserted, to keep up that just balance be- 
twixt wisdom and folly, without which, a 
book would not hold together a single year ; 
nor is it a poor creeping digression (which, 
but for the name of, a man might continue 
as well going on in the King's highway) 
which will do the business. — No, if it is to 
be a digression, it must be a good frisky 
one, and upon a frisky subject too, where 
neither the horse nor his rider are to be 
caught but by rebound. 

The only difficulty is, raising powers* 
suitable to the nature of the service : Fancy 
is capricious, — Wit must not be searched 
for, — and Pleasantry (good-natured slut as 
she is) will not come in at a call, was an 
empire to be laid at her feet. 

— The best way for a man is, to say his 
prayers. 

Only, if it puts him in mind of his in- 
firmities and defects, as well ghostly as 
bodily, — for that purpose, he will find him- 
self rather worse after he has said them 
than before ; — for other purposes better. 

For my own part, there is not a way, 
either moral or mechanical, under Heaven, 
that I could think of, which I have not taken 
with myself in this case; sometimes by 
addressing myself directly to the soul her- 
self, and arguing the point over and over 
again with her, upon the extent of her own 
faculties. 

— I never could make them an inch the 
wider. 

Then by changing my system, and try- 
ing what could be made of it upon the body 
by temperance, soberness, and chastity 
These are good, quoth I, in themselves,— 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



2:>o 



they are good, absolutely ; — they are good, 
relatively; — they are go*d ^r health, — 
they are good for happiness in this world, — 
they are good for happiness in the next. 

In short, they are good for every thing 
but the tiling wanted ; and there they are 
good for nothing, but to leave the soul just 
as Heaven made it. As for the theological 
virtues of Faith and Hope, they give it 
courage; but then, that snivelling virtue 
of Meekness (as my father would always 
call it) takes it quite away again, so you 
are exactly where you started. 

Now, in all common and ordinary cases, 
there is nothing which I have found to an- 
swer so well as this. — 

Certainly, if there is any dependence 
upon Logic, and that I am not blinded by 
self-love, there must be something of true 
genius about me, merely upon this symptom 
of it, That I do not know what Envy is: 
for never do I hit upon any invention or de- 
vice which tendeth to the furtherance of 
good writing, but I instantly make it pub- 
lic; willing that all mankind should write 
as well as myself: 

— Which they certainly will, when they 
think as little. 



CHAP. XIII. 

Now, in ordinary cases, that is, when I 
am only stupid, and the thoughts rise heavily 
and pass gummous through my pen, — 

Or that I am got, I know not how, into 
a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous 
writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of 
it for my soul ; so must be obliged to go on 
writing like a Dutch commentator to the 
end of the chapter, unless something be 
done, — 

I never stand conferring with pen and 
ink one moment; for if a pinch of snuff, or 
a stride or two across the room, will not do 
the business for me, — I take a razor at once ; 
and having tried the edge of it upon the 
palm of my hand, without further ceremony, 
except that of first lathering my beard, I 
shave it off; taking care only, if I do leave 
a hair, that it be not a grey one ; this done, 
I change my shirt, put on a better coat, — 
send for mv last wig. — put my topaz-ring 
upon my finger , and, in a word, dress my- 



self from otie end to the other of me, after 
my best fashion. 

Now the Devil in lu'll must be in it, it 
this does not do: for, consider, Sir, as every 
man chooses to be present at the shaving 
of his own beard (though there is no rule 
without an exception), and unavoidably sit* 
over-against himself the whole time it is 
doing, in case he has a hand in it, — the 
Situation, like all others, has notions of her 
own to put into the brain. 

I maintain it, the conceits of a rough- 
bearded man are seven years more terse 
and juvenile for one single operation, and 
if they did not run a risk of being quite 
shaved away, might be carried up, by con- 
tinual shavings, to the highest pitch of sub- 
limity. — How Homer could write with sc 
long a beard, I don't know; — and as it 
makes against my hypothesis, I as little 
care : — but let us return to the Toilet. 

Ludovicus Sorbonensis makes this en- 
tirely an affair of the body (tfalepucr) npa^ts) 
as he calls it, — but he is deceived : the soul 
and body are joint-sharers in every thing 
they get: a man cannot dress, but his ide.^s 
get cloth'd at the same time: and if he 
dresses like a gentleman, every one of 
them stands presented to his imagination, 
genteelized along with him; — so that he 
has nothing to do but take his pen, and 
write like himself. 

For this cause, when your Honors ana 
Reverences would know whether I write 
clean, and fit to be read, you will be able 
to judge full as well by looking into my 
laundress's bill, as my book: there waa 
one single month, in which I can make it 
appear, that I dirtied one-and-thirty shirts 
with clean writing ; and after all, was more 
abused, cursed, criticis'd, and confounded, 
and had more mystic heads shaken at me, 
for what I had wrote in that one month, than 
in all the other months of that year put to- 
gether. 

But their Honors and Reverences nad 
not seen my bills. 



CHAP. XIV. 

As I never had any intention of oegih 
ning the Digression I arr making all tin* 
preparat'n for, till I cone to the 15i»» 



£r>0 



LIFE AND 



cnapter, — I have this chapter to put to 
whatever use I think proper. — I have twenty 
this moment ready for it. — I could write 
my chapter of Button-holes in it, — 

Or my chapter of Pishes, which should 
follow them, — 

Or my chapter of Knots, in case their 
Reverences have done with them: — they 
might lead me into mischief. The safest 
way is, to follow the track of the learned, 
and raise objections against what I have 
been writing, though I declare beforehand, 
I know no more than my heels how to an- 
swer them. 

And first, it may be said, there is a pelt- 
ing kind of Tkersitical satire, as black as 
the very ink 'tis wrote with — (and by the 
bye, whoever says so, is indebted to the 
Muster-master General of the Grecian army, 
for suffering the name of so ugly and foul- 
mouth'd a man as Thersites to continue 
upon his roll, — for it has furnish'd him with 
an epithet) — in these productions, he will 
urge, all the personal washings and scrub- 
bings upon earth do a sinking genius no 
sort of good, — but just the contrary, inas- 
much as the dirtier the fellow is, the better 
generally he succeeds in it. 

To this I have no other answer, — at least 
ready, — but that the Archbishop of Bene- 
vento wrote his nasty Romance of the Gal- 
atea, as all the world knows, in a purple 
coat, waistcoat, and purple pair of breeches; 
a.nd that the penance set him of writing a 
commentary upon the book of the Revela- 
tions, as severe as it was look'd upon by one 
oart of the world, was far from being deem'd 
w by the other, upon the single account of 
that Investment. 

Another objection to all this remedy, is 
its want of universality ; forasmuch as the 
shaving part of it, upon which so much 
stress is laid, by an unalterable law of na- 
ture excludes one half of the species en- 
tirely from its use, — all I can say, is, that 
female writers, whether of England, or of 
France, must e'en go without it. 

As for the Spanish ladies, — I am in no 
(Miri o r distress. 



CHAP XV. 

The fifteenth chapter is come at last; 
«ud onnjrs nothing with it but a sad signa- 



OPINIONS 

ture of " How our pleasures slip from under 
"us in this world !" 

For in talking of my Digression,— J de- 
clare before Heaven, I have made it ! What 
a strange creature is mortal man ! said she. 

— 'Tis very true, said I ; — but 'twere 
better to get all these things out of our 
heads, and return to my uncle Toby. 



CHAP. XVI. 

When my uncle Toby and the Corporal 
had marched down to the bottom of the 
avenue, they recollected their business lay 
the other way ; so they faced about, and 
marched up straight to Mrs. Wadman's 
door. 

I warrant your Honor, said the Corporal, 
touching his Montero-cap with his hand as 
he passed him, in order to give a knock at 
the door. — My uncle Toby, contrary to hia 
invariable way of treating his faithful ser- 
vant, said nothing good or bad : the truth 
was, he had not altogether marshall'd his 
ideas; he wish'd for another conference, 
and, as the Corporal was mounting up the 
three steps before the door, he herrfd twice; 
a portion of my uncle Toby's most modest 
spirits fled, at each expulsion, towards the 
Corporal; he stood with the rapper of the 
door suspended for a full minute in his hand, 
he scarce knew why. Bridget stood perdue 
within, with her finger and her thumb upon 
the latch, benumb'd with expectation; and 
Mrs. Wad man, with an eye ready to be de- 
flowered again, sat breathless behind the 
window-curtain of her bed-chamber, watch- 
ing their approach. 

— Trim ! said my uncle Toby ; — but, as 
he articulated the word, the minute expired, 
and Trim let fall the rapper. 

My uncle Toby, perceiving that all hopes 
of a conference were knock'd on the head 
by it, whistled Lillibullero. 



CHAP. XVII. 

As Mrs. Bridget's finger and thumb were 
upon the latch, the Corporal did not knock 
as often as perchance your Honor's taylor 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

— T might 1 ave taken my example some- 
thing nearer home; for I owe mine some 
five-and-tvventy pounds at least, and wonder 
at the man's patience. 

— But this is nothing- at all to the world : 
only 'tis a cursed thing to be in debt; and 
there seems to be a fatality in the exche- 
quers of some poor princes, particularly 
those of our house, which no economy can 
bind down in i^ons. For my own part, I'm 
persuaded there is not any one prince, pre- 
late, pope, or potentate, great or small, upon 
earth, more desirous in his heart of keeping 
straight with the world than I am, — or who 
takes more likely means for it. I never 
give above half a guinea, — nor walk with 
boots, — nor cheapen toothpicks, nor lay out 
a shilling upon a band-box, the year round 
and, for the six months I'm in the country, 
I'm upon so small a scale, that with all the 
good temper in the world, I outdo Rousseau 
a bar-length ! — for I keep neither man nor 
boy, nor horse, nor cow, nor dog, nor cat, 
nor any thing that can eat or drink, except 
a thin poor piece of a vestal (to keep my 
fire in) and who has generally as bad an 
appetite as myself: — but, if you think this 
makes a phijosopher of me, — I would not, 
my good people, give a rush for your judg- 
ments. 

True philosophy ; — but there is no treat- 
ing the subject whilst my uncle is whistling 
Lillibullero. 

— Let us go into the house. 



201 



CHAP. XX. 



CHAP. XVIIL 



CHAP. XIX. 



— You shall see tie very place, Madanv 
said my uncle Toby. 

Mrs. Wadman blush'd, — look'd towards 
the door, — turn'd pale, — blush'd slightly 
again, — recover'd her natural color, — 
blush'd worse than ever; which, for the 
sake of the unlearned reader, I translate 
thus: 

"L — d! I cannot look at it! 
" What would the world say if I look'd at itf 
" / should drop down if I looked at it : 
" / wish I could look at it. 
" There can be no sin in looking at it 
— " / will look at it:' 

Whilst all this was running through 
Mrs. Wadman's imagination, my uncle 
Toby had risen from the sofa, and got to 
the other side of the parlor-door, to give 
Trim an order about it in the passage 



* * * j believe it is in the 

garret, said my uncle Toby. — I saw it there, 
an' please your Honor, this morning, an- 
swered Trim. — Then prithee step directly 
for it, Trim said my uncle Toby, and bring 
it into the parlor. 

The Corporal did not approve of the or- 
ders; but most cheerfully obeyed them. 
The first was not an act of his will ; — the 
second was; so he put on his Montero-cap, 
and went as fast as his lame knee would 
let him. My uncle Toby returned into the 
parlor, and sat himself down again upon 
the sofa. 

— You shall lay your finger upon the 
place, said my uncle Toby. — I will not 
touch it, however, quoth Mrs. Wadmun to 
herself. 

This requires a second translation .— it 
shows what little knowledge is got by mere 
words ; — we must go up to the first spring* 

Now, in order to clear up the mist which 
hangs upon these three pages, I must ei< 
deavor to be as clear as possible myself 



282 



Rub your hands thrice across your fore- 
leads, — blow your noses, — cleanse your 
emunctories, — sneeze, my good people; — 
God bless you. 

Now give me all the help you can. 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 

— I am determined answered Slawken- 
bergius, that all the powers upon earth sha.. 
nsver wring that secret from my breasc 



CHAP. XXI. 

As there are fifty different ends (counting 
aJ ends in, — as well civil as religious) for 
which a woman takes a husband, she first 
gets about and carefully weighs, then sepa- 
rates and distinguishes, in her mind, which 
of all that number of ends is hers; then, by 
discourse, inquiry, argumentation, and in- 
ference, she investigates and finds out whe- 
ther she has got hold of the right one ; — 
and, if she has, — then, by pulling it gently 
this way and that way, she further forms 
a judgment, whether it will not break in 
the drawing. 

The imagery under which Slawkenber- 
gius impresses this upon his reader's fancy, 
in the beginning of his third Decade, is so 
ludicrous, that the honor I bear the sex 
will not suffer me to quote it, — otherwise, 
it is not destitute of humor. 

"She first, saith Slawkenbergius, stops 
the ass; and holding his halter in her left 
hand (lest he should get away) she thrusts 
her right hand into the very bottom of his 
pannier, to search for it. — For what?— 
You'll not know the sooner, quoth Slaw 
kenbergius, for interrupting me. 

" I have nothing, good Lady, but empty 
bottles," says the ass. 

— " I'm loaded with tripes," says the 
second. 

— And thou art little better, quoth she to 
ihe third ; for nothing is there in thy pan- 
niers but trunk-hose and pantofles ; — and so 
to the fourth and fifth, going on, one by one, 
through the whole string, till coming to the 
ass wtiicn carries it, she turns the pannier 
iipsid°-down, looks at it, — considers it, — 
Kurnples it, — measures it, — stretches it, — 
wets it, — dries it, — then takes her teeth 
in ah to tne warp and weft of it. 

Of vvnat ! for the love of Christ ' 



CHAP. XXII. 

We live in a world beset on all sidea 
with mysteries and riddles, — and so 'tis nc 
matter ; — else it seems strange, that Natuie, 
who makes every thing 1 so well to answer 
its destination, and seldom or never errs, 
unless for pastime, in giving such forms and 
aptitudes to whatever passes through her 
hands, that, whether she designs for the 
plow, the caravan, the cart, — or whatever 
other creature she models, be it. but an ass's 
foal, you are sure to have the thing you 
wanted ; and yet, at the same time, shoulc 
so eternally bungle it as she does, in making 
so simple a thing as a married man. 

Whether it is in the choice of the clay 
— or that it is frequently spoil'd in the baking 
(by an excess of which a husband may turn 
out too crusty, you know, on one hand, — or 
not enough so, through defect of heat, on 
the other;) — or whether this great artificer 
is not so attentive to the little Platonic exi- 
gencies of that part of the species, for 
whose use she is fabricating this ; — or that 
her Ladyship sometimes scarce knows what 
sort of a husband will do, — I know not: we 
will discourse about it after supper. 

It is enough, that neither the observation 
itself, nor the reasoning upon it, are at all 
to the purpose — but rather against it ; since, 
with regard to my uncle Toby's fitness for 
the marriage state, nothing was ever better: 
she had formed him of the best and kindliest 
clay, had temper'd it with her own milk, 
and breathed into it the sweetest spirit ; — 
she had made him all gentle, generous, and 
humane; — she had filled his heart with 
trust and confidence, and disposed every 
passage which led to it for the communica- 
tion of the tenderest offices; she had, more- 
over, considered the other causes for which 
matrimony was ordained — 

And, accordingly, 



* * * 

* * * 

* * * 



* * 

* * 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 

The Donation was not defeated by my 
uncle Toby's wound. 

Now, this last article was somewhat apoc- 
ryphal ; and tue Devil, who is the great dis- 
turber of our faiths in this world, had raised 
scruples in Mrs. Wadman's brain about it: 
and, like a true Devil as he was, had done 
his own work at the same time, by turning 
my uncle Toby's virtue thereupon into no- 
thing but empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose, 
and pantojles. 



203 



CHAP. XXIII. 

Mrs. Bridget had pawn'd all the little 
<3tock of honor a poor chambermaid was worth 
in the world, that she would get to the bot- 
tom of the affair in ten days ; and it was 
built upon one of the most concessible postu- 
lata in nature ; namely, that, whilst my uncle 
Toby was making love to her mistress, the 
Corporal could find nothing better to do 
than to make love to her; — "And Fll let 
him, as much as he wilt," said Bridget, " to 
get it out of him." 

Friendship has two garments, an outer 
and an under one. Bridget was serving her 
mistress's interests in the one, — and doing 
the thing which most pleased herself in tbe 
other; so had as many stakes depending 
upon my uncle Toby's wound as the Devil 
himself. — Mrs. Wadman had but one, — and 
as it possibly might be her last (without dis- 
couraging Mrs. Bridget, or discrediting her 
talents) was determined to play her cards 
herself. 

She wanted not encouragement : a child 
might have look'd into his hand ; — there was 
such a plainness and simplicity in his play- 
ing out what, trumps he had, — with such an 
unmistrusting ignorance of the ten-ace, — 
and so naked and defenceless did he sit upon 
the same sofa with Widow Wadman, that a 
generous heart would have wept to have 
won the game of him 

Let us drop the metaphor. 



CHAP. XXIV. 

— And the story too, if you please ; for 
though I have all along been hastening to- 



wards this part of it, with so much earnest 
desire, as well knowing it to be the choicest 
morsel of what I had to offer to the world, 
yet now that I am got to it, anyone is wel- 
come to take my pen and go on with the 
story for me that will, — I see the difficulties 
of the descriptions I am going to give, — ani 
feel my want of powers. 

It is one comfort at least to me, that . 
lost some fourscore ounces of blood this week 
in a most uncritical fever which attacked 
me at the beginning of this chapter : so that 
I have still some hopes remaining it may be 
more in the serous or globular parts of the 
blood, than in the subtle aura of the brain : 
— be it which it will, — an Invocation can 
do no hurt ; — and I leave the affair entirely 
to the invoked, to inspire or to inject mu 
according as he sees good. 

THE INVOCATION. 

Gentle Spirit of sweetest humor, who ers'. 
did sit upon the easy pen of my beloved Cer- 
vantes! Thou who glided'st daily through 
his lattice, and turned'st the twilight of hig 
prison into noon-day brightness by thy pres- 
ence, — tinged'st his little urn of water with 
heaven-sent nectar, and, all the time he 
wrote of Sancho and his master, didst cast 
thy mystic mantle o'er his wither'd stump,* 
and wide extended it to all the evils of hia 
life — 

— Turn in hither, I beseech thee ! — behold 
these breeches! — they are all I have in the 
world ; — that piteous rent was given them 
at Lyons. 

My shirts! see what a deadly schism has 
happen'd amongst 'em ; — for the laps are m 
Lombardy, and the rest of 'em here. — I never 
had but six, and a cunning gipsy of a laun- 
dress at Milan cut me off the /ore-laps of 
five. — To do her justice, she did it with 
some consideration, — for I was returning 
out of Italy. 

And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a 
pistol tinder-box, which was. moreover, 
filch'd from me at Sienna, and twice that I 
paid five Pauls for two hard eggs, once at 
Raddicofini, and a second time at Capua, — 1 
do not think a journey through France and 
Italy, provided a man keeps his temper ail 
the way, so bad a thing as some people 



* He lost his hand at the battle of Lmifcnu; 



2(54 LIFE AND 

would make you believe; there must be 
ups and downs, or how the deuce should we 
get into valleys where Nature spreads so 
many tables of entertainment 7 — 'Tis non- 
sense to imagine they will lend you their 
voitures to be shaken to pieces for nothing ; 
and, unless you pay twelve sous for greas- 
ing your wheels, how should the poor peas- 
ant get butter to his bread 7 — We really 
expect too much, — and, for the livre or two 
above par for your supper and bed, at the 
most they are but one shilling and nine- 
pence halfpenny, — who would embroil their 
philosophy for it 7 for Heaven's and for your 
own sake, pay it, — pay it with both hands 
open, rather than xeave Disappointment 
sitting drooping upon the eyes of your fair 
nostess and her damsels in the gateway, at 
Your departure; — and besides, my dear Sir, 
vou get a sisterly kiss of each of 'em, worth 
a pound : — at least I did ; — 

— For my uncle Toby's amours running 
all the way in my head, they had the same 
effect upon me as if they had been my own. 
— I was in the most perfect state of bounty 
and good-will, and felt the kindliest har- 
mony vibrating within me; with every os- 
cillation of the chaise alike; so that, whether 
the roads were rough or smooth, it made 
no difference ; every thing I saw, or had to 
do with, touch'd upon some secret spring, 
either of sentiment or rapture. 

— They were the sweetest notes I ever 
heard ; and I instantly let down the fore- 
glass to hear them more distinctly. — 'Tis 
Maria, said the postilion, observing I was 
listening. Poor Maria, continued he (lean- 
ing his body on one side to let me see her, 
for he was in a line betwixt us) is sitting 
upon a bank, playing her vespers upon her 
pipe, with her little goat beside her. 

The young fellow utter'd this with an ac- 
cent and a look so perfectly in tune to a 
fooling heart, that I instantly made a vow 
I would give him a four-and-twenty sous 
piece when I got to Moulins. 

— And who is poor Maria 7 said I. 

— The love and pity of all the villages 
%round us, said the postilion : it is but three 
ears ago that the sun did no* shine upon 
so fair, so quick-witted and amiable a maid ; 
and belter f ite did Maria deserve than to 
have her bans forbid by the intrigues of 
die curate of the parish who publish'd them. 



OPINIONS 

He was going on, when Maria, who had 
made a short pause, put the pipe to her 
mouth and began the air again ; — they wert' 
the same notes, — yet were ten ti mes sweeter 
| — It is the evening service to the Virgin 
said the young man ; — but who has taugh. 
her to play it, or how she came by her pipe, 
no one knows: we think that Heaven has 
assisted her in both ; for, ever since she has 
been unsettled in her mind, it seems her 
only consolation ; she has never once had 
the pipe out of her hand, but plays that 
service upon it almost day and night. 

The postilion delivered this with so much 
discretion and natural eloquence, that I 
could not help deciphering something in his 
face above his condition, and should have 
sifted out his history, had not poor Maria's 
taken such full possession of me. 

We had got up by this time almost to the 
bank where Maria was sitting : she was in 
a thin white jacket, with her hair, all but 
two tresses, drawn up into a silk net, with 
a few olive-leaves twisted a little fantas- 
tically on one side ; — she was beautiful ; 
and, if ever I felt the full force of an honest 
heart-ache, it was the moment I saw her. 

— God help her ! poor damsel ! above a 
hundred masses, said the postilion, have 
been said, in the several parish-churches 
and convents around, for her, — but without 
effect ; we have still hopes, as she is sensi- 
ble for short intervals, that the Virgin at 
last will restore her to herself; but her 
parents, who know her best, are hopeless 
upon that score, and think her senses are 
lost for ever. 

As the postilion spoke this, Maria made 
a cadence so melancholy, so tender and 
querulous, that I sprung out of the chaise 
to help her, and found myself sitting betwixt 
her and her goat before I relapsed from my 
enthusiasm. 

Maria look'd wistfully for some time at 
me, and then at her goat, — and then at me, 
— and then at her goat again, and so on, 
alternately. 

— Well, Maria, said I softly, what resem- 
blance do you find 7 

I do entreat the candid reader to believe 
me, that it was from the humblest convic- 
tion of what a least man is, — that I asked 
the question ; ana that I would not have let 
fall an unseasonable pleasantry in the ven- 



OF TRISTRA 

eraMe p esent' of Misery, to be entitled to 
all the wit that ever Rabelais scatter'd, — 
and yet I own my heart smote me, and that 
I so smarted at the very idea of it, that I 
swore I would set up for Wisdom, and utter 
grav,e sentences the rest of my days; — and 
never, — never attempt again to commit 
mirth with man, woman, or child, the longest 
day I had to live. 

As for writing nonsense to them, — I be- 
lieve there was a reserve ; — but that I leave 
to the world. 

Adieu, Maria !— adieu, poor hapless dam- 
eel ! — some time, but not now, I may hear 
thy sorrows from thy own lips, — but I was 
deceived ; for that moment she took her pipe 
and told me such a tale of woe with it, that 
I rose up, and with broken and irregular 
•teps walk'd softly to my chaise. 

— What an excellent inn at Moulins ! 



CHAP. XXV. 

When we have got to the end of this 
chapter (but not before) we must all turn 
nack to the two blank chapters; on the ac- 
count of which my honor has lain bleeding 
this half hour, — I stop it, by pulling off one 
of my y jllow slippers, and throwing it, with 
all my violence, to the opposite side of my 
room, with a declaration at the heel of it, — 

That whatever resemblance it may bear 
to half the chapters which are written in 
the world, or, for aught I know, may be now 
writing in it, — that it was as casual as the 
foam of Zeuxis his horse ; besides, I look 
upon a chapter which has only nothing in 
it, with respect; and considering what worse 
things there are in the world, — that it is 
no way a proper subject for satire. 

— Why then was it left sol And here, 
without staying for my reply, shall I be 
called as many blockheads, numskulls, 
doddy poles, dunderheads, ninny hammers, 
goosecaps, joltheads, nincompoops, and sh-t 
-a-bods, — and other unsavory appellations 
as ever the cake-bakers of Lerne cast in the 
teeth of King Gargantua's shepherds ; — and 
I'll let them do it, as Bridget said, as much 
as they please: for how was it possible they 
should foresee the necessity I was under of 
21 



M SHAINTDY. 205 

writing the 25th chapter of my book before 
the 18th ? &c. 

— So I don't take it amiss. — All I wish is, 
That it may be a lesson to the world, " to 
"let people tell their stories their own way" 



TJie Eighteenth Chapter. 

As Mrs. Bridget opened the door before 
the Corporal had well given the rap, the 
interval betwixt that and my uncle Toby's 
introduction into the parlor was so short, 
that Mrs. Wadman had but just time to 
get from behind the curtain, — lay a Bibte 
upon the table, and advance a step or two 
towards the door to receive him. 

My uncle Toby saluted Mrs. Wadman, 
after the manner in which women were 
saluted by men in the year of our Lord God 
one thousand seven hundred and thirteen ; 
— then facing about, he march'd up abreast 
with her to the sofa, and in three plain 
words, though not before he was sat down, 
— nor after he was sat down, — but as he 
was sitting down, told her, "he was in 
love ;" so that my uncle Toby strained him- 
self more in the declaration than he needed. 

Mrs. Wadman naturally looked down 
upon a slit she had been darning up in her 
apron, in expectation every moment that 
my uncle Toby would go on ; but having 
no talents for amplification, and love, more- 
over, of all others, being a subject of which 
he was the least a master, — when he had 
told Mrs. Wadman once that he loved her, 
he let it alone, and left the matter to work 
after its own way. 

My father was always in raptures with 
this system of my uncle Toby's, as lie falsely 
called it, and would often say, That could 
his brother Toby to his process have added 
but a pipe of tobacco, — he had wherewitha. 
to have found his way, if there was faith in 
a Spanish proverb, towards the hearts of 
half the women upon the globe. 

My uncle Toby never understood what 
my father meant: nor will I presume to 
extract more from it than a condemna- 
tion of an error which the bulk of the world 
lie under ; — but the French, every one of 
'em to a man, who believe in it alrrmst «u 
23 



2(56 



LIFE AND 



much as the real presence, " That talking 
"of love is making it." 

— I would as soon set about making 1 a 
black-pudding by the same receipt. 

Let us go on : — Mrs. Wadman sat in ex- 
pectation my uncle Toby would do so, to 
almost the first pulsation of that minute, 
wherein silence on one side or the other 
generally becomes indecent : so edging her- 
self a little more towards him, and raising 
up her eyes, sub-blushing, as she did it, — 
she took up the gauntlet, — or the discourse 
(if you like it the better) and communed 
with my uncle Toby thus — 

The cares and disquietudes of the mar- 
riage-state, quoth Mrs. Wadman, are very 
great. — I suppose so, said my uncle Toby. 
— And therefore when a person, continued 
Mrs. Wadman, is so much at his ease as 
you are, — so happy, Captain Shandy, in 
yourself, your friends, and your amuse- 
ments, — I wonder what reasons can incline 
you to the state ! 

— They are written, quoth my uncle Toby, 
in the Common-Prayer Book. 

Thus far my uncle Toby went on warily, 
and kept within his depth, leaving Mrs. 
Wadman to sail upon the gulf as she 
pleased. 

As for children, said Mrs. Wadman, 
though a principal end, perhaps, of the in- 
stitution, and the natural wish, I suppose, 
of every parent, — yet do not we all find, 
they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain 
comforts 1 — and what is there, dear Sir, 
to pay for the heart-aches ! — what com- 
pensation for the many tender and disquiet- 
ing apprehensions of a suffering and de- 
fenceless mother, who brings them into 
life ? — I declare, said my uncle Toby, smit 
with pity, I know of none ; unless it be the 
pleasure which it has pleased God — 

— A fiddle-stick ! quoth she. 



Chapter the Nineteenth. 

Now there are such an infinitude of notes, 
tunes, cants, chants, airs, looks, and accents 
with which the word fiddlestick may be 
pronounced in all such cases as this, every 
vmo ol 'em impressing a sense and meaning 



OPINIONS 

as different from the other as dirt floif 
cleanliness, — that casuists (for it is an affair 
of conscience upon that scor*) reckon up 
no less than fourteen thousand in which 
you may do either right or wrong. 

Mrs. Wadman hit upon the fiddlestick 
which summoned up all my uncle Toby's 
modest blood into his cheeks; — so feeling 
within himself that he had somehow or other 
got beyond his depth, he stopped short; and 
without entering further either into the 
pains or pleasures of matrimony, he laid 
his hand upon his heart, and made an offer 
to take them as they were, and share them 
along with her. 

When my uncle Toby had said this, he 
did not care to say it again ; so casting his 
eye upon the Bible, which Mrs. Wadman 
had laid upon the table, he took it up; and 
popping, dear soul ! upon a passage in it, 
of all others the most interesting to him, — 
which was the siege of Jericho, — he set 
himself to read it over, — leaving his pro- 
posal of marriage, as he had done his de- 
claration of love, to work with her after its 
own way. Now it wrought neither as an 
astringent nor a loosener ; nor like opium, 
nor bark, nor mercury, nor buckthorn, nor 
any one drug which Nature had bestowed 
upon the world ; — in short, it work'd not at 
all in her ; and the cause of that was, that 
there was something working there before. 
— Babbler that I am ! I have anticipated 
what it was a dozen times; but there is 
fire still in the subject. — Allons I 



CHAP. XXVI. 

It is natural for a perfect stranger who 
is going from London to Edinburgh, to in- 
quire, before he sets out, how many miles 
to York? which is about the half-way : — nor 
does any body wonder, if he goes on and 
asks about the corporation, &c. 

It was just as natural for Mrs. Wadman, 
whose first husband was all his time af- 
flicted with a sciatica, to wish to know how 
far from the hip to the grom ; and how far 
she was likely to suffer more or less in her 
feelings, in the one case than in the other. 

She had accordingly read Drake's Anato- 



OF TRISTRA. [ SHANDY. 



2(>7 



my from one end to the other. She had 
peep d into Wharton upon the Brain, and 
borrowed *Graaf upon the Bones and Mus- 
cles, but could make nothing of it. 

She had reason'd likewise from her own 
powers, — laid down theorems, — drawn con- 
sequences, and come to no conclusion. 

To clear up all, she had twice asked 
Doctor Slop, " If poor Captain Shandy was 
" ever likely to recover of his wound ?" 

— He is recovered, Doctor Slop would 
say. — 

What, quite ? 

— Quite, Madam. 

— But what do you mean by a recovery ? 
Mrs. Wad man would say. 

Doctor Slop was the worst man alive at 
definitions; and so Mrs. Wadman could 
get no knowledge. In short, there was no 
way to extract it, but from my uncle Toby 
himself. 

There is an accent of humanity in an 
inquiry of this kind, which lulls Suspicion 
to rest ; — and I am half persuaded the ser- 
pent got pretty near it, in his discourse 
with Eve; for the propensity in the sex to 
be deceived could not be so great, that she 
should have boldness to hold chat with the 
Devil without it. — But there is an accent 
of humanity: — how shall I describe it? — 
'tis an accent which covers the part with 
a garment, and gives the inquirer a right 
to be as particular with it as your body-sur- 
geon. 

" — Was it without remission 1 

" — Was it more tolerable in bed ? 

" — Could he lie on both sides alike with it? 

" — Was he able to mount a horse! 

" — Was motion bad for it ]" et catera, 
were so tenderly spoke to, and so directed 
towards my uncle Toby's heart, that every 
item of them suuk ten times deeper into it 
than the evils themselves ; — but when Mrs. 
Wadman went roiH;d about by Namur to 
get at my uncle Toby's groin ; and engaged 
him t.) attack the point of the advanced 
counterscarp, and pele melt with the Dutch, 
to take the countpr-guard of St. Roch 
b word-in-hand, — and then, with tender notes 



* Tins must he a mistake in Mr. Shandy ; f^ r G> r. a f 
wrote upon the oaiicrealic juice, and the pa. is of 
genet atiou. 



I laying upon his car, led him, all bleeding, 
by the hand out of the trench, wiping her 
eye as he was carried to his tent, — Heaven ! 
Earth ! Sea ! — all was lifted up, — the springs 
of nature rose above their levels. — an angel 
or mercy sat beside him on the sola, — his 
heart glo»v'd with lire; — and had he been 
worth a thousand, he had lost every heart 
of them to Mrs. Wadman. 

— And whereabouts, dear Sir, quoth Mrs. 
Wadman, a little categorically, did you re- 
ceive this sad blow ! — In asking this ques- 
tion, Mrs. Wadman gave a slight glance 
towards the waistband of my uncle Toby's 
red plush breeches, expecting naturally, as 
the shortest reply to it, that my uncle Toby 
would lay his fore-finger upon the place. — 
It fell out otherwise, — for my uncle Toby 
having got his wound before the gate of St 
Nicholas, in one of the traverses of the 
trench opposite to the salient angle of the 
demi-bastion of St. Roch, he could at any 
time stick a pin upon the identical spot of 
ground where he was standing when the 
stone struck him. This struck instantly 
upon my uncle Toby's sensorium ; — and 
with it, struck his large map of the town 
and citadel of Namur, and its environs, 
which he had purchased and pasted down 
upon a board, by the Corporal's aid, during 
his long illness: — it had lain, with other 
military lumber, in the garret ever since; 
and accordingly the Corporal was detached 
to the garret to fetch it. 

My uncle Toby measured off thirty 
toises, with Mrs. Wadrnan's scissars, from 
the returning angle before the gate of 
St. Nicholas; and with such a virgin mod- 
esty laid her finger upon the place, that 
the Goddess of Decency, if then in being, 
— if not, 'twas her shade, — shook her liead, 
and with a finger wavering across her eyes, 
forbade her to explain the mistake. 

Unhappy Mrs. Wadman ! 

— For nothing can make this chapter go 
off with spirit but an apostrophe to thee : 
— but my heart tells me, that in such a 
crisis an apostrophe is but an insult in dis- 
guise ; and ere I would offer one to a woman 
in distress, — let the chapter go to th« 
Devil; provided any damn'd critic in keep 
ing will be but at the trouble to take k 
with him. 



268 



LIFE AND OPINIONS 



CHAP. XXVII. 

My uncle Toby's map is carried down 
into the kitchen. 



CHAP. XXVIII. 

— And here is the Maes, — and this is the 
Sambre, said the Corporal, pointing with 
his right hand extended a little towards the 
map, and his left upon Mrs. Bridget's shoul- 
der, — but not the shoulder next him ; — and 
this, said he, is the town of Namur, — and 
this the citadel, — and there lay the French, 
and here lay his Honor and myself; — and 
in this cursed trench, Mrs. Bridget, quoth 
the Corporal, taking her by the hand, did 
he receive the wound which crush'd him so 
miserably here. — In pronouncing which, he 
elig-htly press'd the back of her hand to- 
wards the part he felt for, — and let it fall. 

— We thought, Mr. Trim, it had been 
more in the middle, said Mrs. Bridget. 

— That would have undone us for ever, 
said the Corporal. 

— And left my poor mistress undone too, 
said Bridget. 

The Corporal made no reply to the re- 
partee, but by giving Mrs. Bridget a kiss. 

— Come, come, said Bridget, holding the 
palm of her left hand parallel to the plane 
of the horizon, and sliding the fingers of 
the other over it, in a way which could 
not have been done, had there been the 
least wart or protuberance,' — Tis every syl- 
lable of it false, cried the Corporal, before 
she had half finished the sentence. 

— I know it to be a fact, said Bridget, 
from credible witnesses. 

— Upon my honor, said the Corporal, 
laying his hand upon his heart, and blushing 
as he spoke, with honest resentment, — 'tis 
a story, Mrs. Bridget, as false as Hell, — 
Not, said Bridget, interrupting him, that 
either I or my mistress care a halfpenny 
about it, whether it is so or no ; — only that 
when one is married, one would choose to 
have such a thing by one at least, — 

It was somewhat unfortunate for Mrs. 
Bridget, that she had begun the attack with 
ber manual exercise ; for the Corporal in- 
euintiy ****** 



CHAP. XXIX. 

It was like the momentary contest in the 
moist eyelids of an April morning, " Wheth 
" er Bridget should laugh or cry." 

She snatch'd up a rolling-pin, — 'twas te* 
to one she had laugh'd. — 

She laid it down, — she cried : and had 
one single tear of 'em but tasted of bitter- 
ness, full sorrowful would the Corporal's 
heart have been that he had used the argu- 
ment ; but the Corporal understood the sex, 
a quart major to a terce at least, better than 
my uncle Toby, and accordingly he assailed 
Mrs. Bridget after this manner : — 

I know, Mrs. Bridget, said the Corporal, 
giving her a most respectful kiss, that thou 
art good and modest by nature ; and art 
withal so generous a girl in thyself, that, if 
I know thee rightly, thou would'st not wound 
an insect, much le?s the honor of so gallant 
and worthy a soul as my master, wast thou 
sure to be made a Countess of; but thou hast 
been set on, and deluded, dear Bridget, as 
is often a woman's case, " to please others 
" more than themselves " 

Bridget's eyes poured down at the sensa- 
tions the Corporal excited. 

— Tell me, — tell me, then, my dear 
Bridget, continued the Corporal, taking hold 
of her hand, which hung down dead by her 
side, — and giving a second kiss, — whose 
suspicion has misled thee 1 

Bridget sobb'd a sob or two, — then open'd 
her eyes ; — the Corporal wiped 'em with 
the bottom of her apron ; — she then open'd 
her heart and told him all. 



CHAP. XXX. 

My uncle Toby and the Corporal had 
gone on separately with their operations 
the greatest part of the campaign, and as 
effectually cut off from all communication 
of what either the one or the other had been 
doing, as if they had been separated from 
each other by the Maes or the Sambre. 

My uncle Toby, on his side, had presented 
himself every afternoon in his red and sil- 
ver, and blue and gold, alternately, and sus- 
tained an infinity of attacks in them, with- 
out knowing them to be attacks ; and so had 
nothing to communicate. 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



269 



The Corporal, on his side, in taking 
Bridget, by it gain'd considerable advan- 
tages, — and consequently had much to com- 
ipunicate ; — but what were the advantages, 
—as well as what was the; manner by which 
he had seiz'd them, required so nice an his- 
torian, that the Corporal durst not venture 
upon it; and, as sensible as he was of glory, 
would rather have been contented to have 
gone bare-headed and without laurels for 
ever, than torture his master's modesty for 
a single moment. 

— Best of honest and gallant servants ! — 
But I have apostrophiz'd thee, Trim, opce 
before; — and could I apotheosize thee also 
(that is to say) with good company, — I would 
do it without ceremony in the very next 
page. 



CHAP. XXXI. 

Now my uncle Toby had one evening 
laid down his pipe upon the table, and was 
counting over to himself, upon his fingers' 
ends (beginning at his thumb) all Mrs. 
Wadman's perfections, one by one ; and 
happening two or three times together, 
either by omitting some, or counting others 
twice over, to puzzle himself sadly before 
he could get beyond his middle-finger, — 
Prithee, Trim, said he, taking up his pipe 
again, bring me a pen and ink. — Trim 
brought paper also. 

— Take a full sheet, Trim ! said my uncle 
Toby, making a sign with his pipe at the 
same time to take a chair and sit down 
close by him at the table. The Corporal 
obeyed, — placed the paper directly before 
him, — took a pen, and dipp'd it in the ink. 

— She has a thousand virtues, Trim ! said 
my uncle Toby. 

— Am I to set them down, 'an please 
your Honor 1 quoth the Corporal. 

— But they must be taken in their ranks, 
replied my uncle Toby; for of them all, 
Trim, tiiat which wins me most, and which 
is a security for all the rest, is the compas- 
sionate turn and singular humanity of her 
character. — I protest, added my uncle Toby, 
looking up, as he protested it, towards the 
top of the ceiling, — that was I her brother, 
Trim, a thousand-fold, she could not make 



more constant or more tender inquiries 
after my sufferings, — though now no morp. 

The Corporal made no reply to my uncle 
Toby's protestation, but by a short cough: 
— he dipp'd the pen a second time into the 
inkhorn; and my uncle Toby, pointing with 
the end of his pipe as close to the top of the 
sheet at the left-hand corner of it as he could 
get it, — the Corporal wrote down the word 
Humanity thus. 

— Prithee, Corporal, said my uncle Toby, 
as soon as Trim had done it, — how often 
does Mrs. Bridget inquire after the wound 
on the cap of thy knee, which thou received'st 
at the battle of Landen ! 

— She never, an' please your Honor, in- 
quires after it at all. 

— That, Corporal, said my uncle Toby, 
with all the triumph the goodness of his 
nature would permit, — that shows the dif- 
ference in the character of the mistress and 
maid. — Had the fortune of war allotted the 
same mischance to me, Mrs. Wad man would 
have inquired into every circumstance re- 
lating to it a hundred times. — She would 
have inquired, an' please your Honor, ten 
times as often about your Honor's groin. — 
The pain, Trim, is equally excruciating, — 
and Compassion has as much to do with the 
one as the other. 

— God bless your Honor, cried the Corpo- 
ral, — what has a woman's compassion to do 
with a wound upon the cap of a man's knee? 
Had your Honor's been shot into ten thou- 
sand splinters at the affair of Landen, 
Mrs. Wadman would have troubled her 
head as little about it as Bridget ; because, 
added the Corporal, lowering his voice, and 
speaking very distinctly, as he assigned his 
reason, — 

"The knee is such a distance from the 
" main body, — Whereas the groin, your 
" Honor knows, is upon the very curtain of 
" the place." 

My uncle Toby gave a long whistle ; — but 
in a note which could scarce be heard across 
the table. 

The Corporal had advanced too far to re- 
tire ; — in three words he told the rest 

My uncle Toby laid down his pipe as 
gently upon the fender as if it had been 
spun from the unravelling of a spider's web. 

— Let us go to my brother Shandy's, said 
he. 



S>?0 LIFE AND OPINIONS 

CHAP. XXXII. CH 



There will be just time, whilst my uncle 
Toby and Trim are walking to my father's, 
to inform voti that Mrs. Wad man had, some 
moons before this, made a confidant of my 
mother; and that Mrs. Bridget, who had the 
burden of her own, as well as her mistress's 
secret to carry, had got happily delivered of 
both to Susannah, behind the garden-wall. 

As for my mother, she saw nothing at all 
in it, to make the least bustle about; — but 
Susannah was sufficient by herself for all 
the ends and purposes you could possibly 
have, in exporting a family secret ; for she 
instantly imparted it by signs to Jonathan ; 
— and Jonathan by tokens to the cook, as 
she was basting a loin of mutton ; the cook 
sold it with some kitchen-fat to the postilion 
for a groat ; who truck'd it with the dairy- 
maid for something of about the same value ; 
— and though whispered in the hay-loft, 
Fame caught the notes with her brazen 
trumpet, and sounded them upon the house- 
top. — In a word, not an old woman in the 
village, or five miles round, who did not un- 
derstand the difficulties of my uncle Toby's 
siege, and what were the secret articles 
which had delayed the surrender. 

My father, whose way was to force every 
event in nature into an hypothesis, by which 
means, never man crucified Truth at the 
rate he did, — had but just heard of the re- 
port as my uncle Toby set out ; and catching- 
fire suddenly at the trespass done his brother 
by it, was demonstrating to Yorick, not- 
withstanding my mother was sitting by, 
not only, " That the Devil was in women, 
" and that the whole of the affair was lust ;' 
hut that every evil and disorder in the world 
of what kind or nature soever, from the first 
fall of Adam, down to my uncle Toby's (in 
elusive) was owing, one way or other, to the 
same unruly appetite. 

Yorick was just bringing my father's hy- 
pothesis to some temper, when my uncle 
Toby entering the room with marks of infi- 
nite benevolence and forgiveness in his looks, 
my father s eloquence rekindled against the 
pass/on; — and as he was not very nice in 
the choice of his words when he was wroth, 
— as soon as my uncle Toby was seated by 
the fire, and had filled his pipe, mv father 
•kukc out in this manner: 



— That provision should be made for con- 
tinuing the race of so great, so exalted, and 
godlike a being as man, — I am far from de- 
nying ; — but philosophy speaks freely of 
every thing; and therefore I still think, and 
do maintain it to be a pity, that it should be 
done by means of a passion, which bends 
down the faculties, and turns all the wisdom, 
contemplations and operations of the soul 
backwards ; — a passion, my dear, continued 
my father, addressing himself to my mother, 
which couples and equals wise men with 
fools, and makes us come out of our caverns 
and hiding-places more like satyrs and four- 
footed beasts than men. 

I know it will be said, continued my father, 
(availing himself of the Prolepsis) that, in 
itself, and simply taken, — like hunger, or 
thirst, or sleep, — 'tis an affair neither good 
nor bad, — nor shameful, nor otherwise. 
Why then did the delicacy of Diogenes 
and Plato so recalcitrate against it? and 
wherefore, when we go about to make and 
plant a man, do we put out the candle 7 
and for what reason is it, that all the parts 
thereof, — the congredients, — the prepara- 
tions, — the instruments, and whatever 
serves thereto, are so held as to be con- 
veyed to a cleanly mind by no language, 
translation, or periphrasis whatever ! 

— The act of killing and destroying a 
man, continued my father, raising his voice, 
— and turning to my uncle Toby, — you see 
is glorious, — and the weapons by which we 
do it are honorable; — we march with them 
upon our shoulders ; — we strut with them 
by our sides; — we gild them; — we carve 
them ; — we inlay them ; — we enrich them ; 
— nay, if it be but a scoundrel cannon, we 
cast an ornament upon the breech of it. 

— rMy uncle Toby laid down his pipe tc 
intercede for a better epithet; — and Yorick 
was rising up to batter the whole hypothesis 
to pieces, — 

When Obadiah broke into the middle of 
the room with a complaint, which cried out 
for an immediate hearing. 

The case was this: — 

My father, whether by ancient custom 
of the manor, or as impropriator of the gieat 
tythes, was obliged to keep a Bull for the 
service of the parish ; and Obadiah had 3ec* 



OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



2',. 



ftis cow upon a pop-visil to him one day or 
other the preceding summer; — I say, one 
uay or other, — because, as chance would 
have it, it was the day on which he was 
married to my father's house-maid ; — so one 
was a reckoning- to the other. Therefore, 
when Obadiah's wife was brought to bed, — 
Obadiah thanked God. — 

Now, said Obadiah, I shall have a calf; 
eo Obadiah went daily to visit his cow. 

She'll calve on Monday, — or Tuesday, or 
Wednesday at the farthest." 

The cow did not calve;— no, she'll not 
calve till next week ; — the cow put it off 
terribly, — till at the end of the sixth week, 
Obadiah's suspicions (like a good man's) fell 
upon the Bull. 

Now the parish being very large, my 
Other's Bull, to speak the truth of him, 
v as no way equal to the department ; he 
had, however, got himself, somehow or 
ether, thrust into employment, — and as he 
went through the business with a grave 
face, my father had a high opinion of him. 

— Most of the townsmen, an' please your 



Worships, quoth Obadiah, believe that 'tis 
all the Bull's fault 

But may not a cow be barren ? replied 
my father, turning to Doctor Slop. 

— It never happens, said Doctor * : iop; but 
the man's wife may have come before her 
time, naturally enough. — Prithee, has the 
child hair upon his head] added Doctor 
Slop. 

— It is as hairy as I am, said Obadiah. — 
Obadiah had not been shaved for three 

weeks. — When --u u , cried 

my father, beginning the sentence with an 
exclamatory whistle; — and so, brother Toby, 
this poor Bull of mine, who is as good a 
Bull as ever p-ss'd, and might have done 
for Europa herself in purer times, — had he 
but two legs less, might have been driven 
into Doctors' Commons, and lost his charac- 
ter; — which to a Town-Bull, brother Toby, 
is the very same thing as his life. 

— L — d! said my mother, what is all this 
story about ! 

A CocA; and a Bull, said Yorick; — and 
one of the best of its kind I ever heard. 



CNI) OF TRISTRAM SIIAINUY 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THROUGH 



iFrauce au» Jtala< 



- • i REV 01 <er, said I, this matter better 
m France. 

— You have been in France? said my 
gentleman, turning quick upon me, with 
the most civil triumph in the world. — 
Strange ! quoth I, debating the matter with 
myself, That one-and-twenty miles' sailing, 
for 'tis absolutely no further from Dover 
to Calais, should give a man these rights: 
— I'll look into them : so giving up the ar- 
gument, — I went straight to my lodgings, 
put up half a dozen shirts and a black pair 
of silk breeches ; — " the coat I have on," 
said I, looking at the sleeve, " will do," — 
took a place in the Dover stage; and, the 
packet sailing at nine the next morning, — 
by three I had got set down to my dinner 
upon a fricaseed chicken, so incontestibly 
in France, that, had I died that night of an 
indigestion, the whole world could not have 
suspended the effects of the droits d'au- 
baine ;* — my shirts, and black pair of silk 
breeches, — portmanteau and all, must have 
gone to the King of France; — even the 
little picture which I have eo long worn, 
and so often told thee, Eliza, I would carry 
with me into my grave, would have been 
torn from my neck ! — Ungenerous ! to seize 
upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, 
whom your subjects had beckoned to their 
coast ! — by Heaven ! Sire ! it is not well 
done; and much docs it grieve me 'tis the 
monarch of a people so civilized and cour- 
teous, and so renowned for sentiment and 
fine feelings, that I have to reason with ! — 

But I have scarce set a foot in your do- 
minions — 



* AH the effects of strangers (Swiss and Scots ex- 
cepted) dying in France are seized, by virtue of this 
law, though the heir be upon the s[K>t ; — the profit of 
U.e*e contingencies beins fanned, there i6 no redress. 

2K 



CALAIS. 

When I had finished my dinner, and 
drank the King of France's health, to sat- 
isfy my. mind that I bore him no spleen, 
but, on the contrary, high honor for the hu- 
manity of his temper, — I rose up an inch 
taller for the accommodation. 

— No, said I, the Bourbon is by no means 
a cruel race ; they may be misled, like other 
people, but there is a mildness in their blood. 
As I acknowledged this, I felt a suffusion 
of a finer kind upon my cheek, more warm 
and friendly to man than what Burgundy 
(at least of two livres a bottle, which was 
such as I had been drinking) could have 
produced. 

— Just God ! said T, kicking my portman- 
teau aside, what is there in this world's 
goods which should sharpen our spirits, and 
make so many kind-hearted brethren of us 
fall out so cruelly as we do by the way 1 

When man is at peace with man, how 
much lighter than a feather is the heaviest 
of metals in his hand ! he pulls out his purse, 
and holding it airily and nncompress'd, looks 
round him, as if he sought for an object to 
share it with. — In doing this, I felt every 
vessel in my frame dilate, — the arteries 
beat all cheerly together, and every power 
which sustained life performed it with so 
little friction, that 'twould have confounded 
the most physical preciense in France: 
with all her materialism, she could scarce 
have called me a machine. 

I'm confident, said I to myself, I should 
have overset her creed. 

The accession of that idea carried Na« 
ture, at that time, as high as she could go, 
— I was at peace with the world before, 
and this finish'd the treaty with mveelf 



274 SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

— Now, was T a King of France, cried I, Itemed ignorance looking downwards upon 



what a moment for an orphan to have 
begg'd his father's portmanteau of me ! 



THE MONK. 

CALAIS. 

I had scarce uttered the words, when a 
poor monk, of the order cf St. Francis, 
came into the room, to beg something for 
his convent. No man cares to have his 
virtues the sport of contingencies, — or one 
man may be generous, as another man is 
puissant; — sed non quoad hanc, — or be it 
r.s it may, — for there is no regular reason- 
ing upon the ebbs and flows of our humors: 
ihey may depend upon the same causes, for 
aught I know, which influence the tides 
themselves ; — 'twould oft be no discredit to 
us to suppose it was so : I'm sure, at least 
for myself, that in many a case I should be 
more highly satisfied to have it said by the 
world — u I had had an affair with the moon, 
in which there was neither sin nor shame," 
than have it pass altogether as my own act 
and deed, wherein there was so much of 
both. 

— But be this as it may, — the moment I 
cast my eyes upon him, I was predeter- 
mined not to give him a single sous; and, 
accordingly, I put my purse into my pocket, 
button'd it up, set myself a little more upon 
my centre, and advanced up gravely to 
him. There was something, I fear, forbid- 
ding in my look : I have his figure this mo- 
ment before my eyes, and think there was 
that in it which deserved better. 

The monk, as I judged from the break in 
his tonsure, a few scatter'd white hairs upon 
his temples being all that remained of it, 
might be about seventy ; but fr~»m his eyes, 
and that sort of fire which was in them, 
which seemed more tempered by courtesy 
than years, could be no more than sixty: — 
(ruth might lie between, — he was certainly 
sixty-five ; and the general air of his coun- 
tenance, notwithstanding something seem'd 
to have been planting wrinkles in it before 
thei 1 * time, agreed to the account. 

It Wds one of those heads which Guido 
liae often painted, — mild, pale, penetrating, 
'tee from all commonplace ideas of fat con- 



the earth ;— it look'd forwards, but look'd 
as if it look'd at something beyond this 
world. How one of his order came by it, 
Heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's 
shoulders, best knows ; but it would have 
suited a Brahmin, and, had I met it upon the 
plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it. 

The rest of his outline may be given in 
a few strokes; one miofht put it into the 
hands of any one to design, for 'twas neither 
elegant nor otherwise, but as character and 
expression made it so : it was a thin, spare 
form, something above the common size, if 
it lost not the distinction by a bend forward 
in the figure, — but it was the attitude of 
entreaty : and, as it now stands presented to 
my imagination, it gained more than it lost 
by it. 

When he had entered the room three 
paces, he stood still ; and laying his left 
hand upon his breast (a slender white staff 
with which he journeyed being in his right) 
— when I had got close up to him, he intro- 
duced himself with the little story of the 
wants of his convent, and the poverty of 
his order; — and did it with so simple a 
grace, — and such an air of deprecation 
was there in the whole cast of his look and 
figure, — I was bewitch'd not to have been 
struck with it. — 

— A better reason was, I had predeter- 
mined not to give him a single sous. 



THE MONK. 



'Tis very true, said I, replying to a cast 
upwards with his eyes, with which he had 
concluded his address; — 'tis very true, — 
and Heaven be their resource who have no 
other but the charity of the world ! the 
stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficienl 
for the many great claims which are hourly 
made upon it. 

As I pronounced the words great claims, 
he gave a slight glance with his eye down- 
wards upon the sleeve of his tunic : — I felt 
the full force of the appeal; — I acknow 
ledge it, said I : — a coarse habit, and that 
but once in three years, with meagre diet, 
— are no g*eat matters ; and the true poin* 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



275 



nf pity is, as they can be earn'd in the world 
with so little industry, that your order 
Bhould wish to procure them by pressing 
upon a fund which is the property of the 
lame, tne dind, the aged, and the infirm ! 
— the captive, who lies down counting over 
and over again the days of his afflictions, lan- 
guishes also for his share of it; and had you 
been of the order of Mercy, instead of the 
order of St. Francis, poor as I am, continued 
I, pointing at my portmanteau, full cheer- 
fully should it have been opened to you, for 
the ransom of the unfortunate. — The monk 
made me a bow. — But of all others, resum'd 
I, the unfortunate of our own country, 
surely, have the first rights; and I have 
left thousands in distress upon our own 
shore. — The monk gave a cordial wave with 
his head, — as much as to say, No doubt, 
there is misery enough in every corner of 
the world, as well as within our convent. 
— But we distinguish, said I, laying my 
hand upon the sleeve of his tunic, in return 
for his appeal, — we distinguish, my good 
father, betwixt those who wish only to eat 
the bread of their own labor — and those 
who eat the bread of other people's, and have 
no other plan in life but to get through it 
in sloth and ignorance, for the love of God. 
The poor Franciscan made no reply : a 
hectic of a moment pass'd across his cheek, 
but could not tarry: — Nature seemed to 
have had done with her resentments in him ; 
he showed none: — but letting his staff* fall 
within his arm, he press'd both his hands 
with resignation upon his breast, and re- 
tired. 



THE MONK. 



CALAIS. 



My heart smote me the moment he shut 
Ine door. — Psha ! said I, with an air of care- 
Jessness, three several times, — but it would 
not do; every ungracious syllable I had 
uttered crowded back into my imagination : 
I reflected I had no right over the poor 
Franciscan but to deny him ; and that the 
punishment of that was enough to the dis- 
appointed, without the addition of unkind 
language. — I considered his grey hairs: — 
his courteous figure seem'd to re-enter, and 
gently ask me what injury he had done me? 



— and why I could use him thus? — I would 
have given twenty livres for an advocate. 
— I have behaved very ill, said I, within 
myself; but I have only just set out upon 
my travels, and shall learn better manners 
as I get along. 



THE DESOBLIGEANT. 

CALAIS. 

When a man is discontented with him- 
self, it has one advantage, however, that it 
puts him into an excellent frame of mind 
for making a bargain. Now, there being- 
no travelling through France and Italy with- 
out a chaise, and nature generally prompting- 
us to the thing we are fittest for, I walked 
out into the coach-yard to buy or hire some- 
thing of that kind to my purpose : an old 
desobligeant,* the furthest corner of the 
court, — hit my fancy at first sight; so I in- 
stantly got into it, and finding it in tolerable 
harmony with my feelings, I ordered the 
waiter to call Monsieur Dessein, the master 
of the hotel ; — but Monsieur Dessein being' 
Sfone to vespers, and not caring to face the 
Franciscan, whom I saw on the opposite 
side of the court, in conference with a lady 
just arrived at the inn, — I drew the taffeta- 
curtain betwixt us, and, being determined 
to write my journey, I took out my pen and 
ink, and wrote the preface to it in the des- 
obligeant. 



PREFACE. 

IN THE DESOBLIGEANT. 

It must have been observed, by many 
a peripatetic philosopher, That Nature has 
set up, by her own unquestionable authority, 
certain boundaries and fences to circum- 
scribe the discontent of man; she has ef- 
fected her purpose in the quietest and easi- 
est manner, by laying him under almost 
insuperable obligations to work out his ease, 
and to sustain his sufferings at home. It is 
there only that she has provided him with 
the most suitable objects to partake of hut 



* A chaise, so called in France, from its holding 
one person. 



276 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



happiness and b<;ar a part of the burden 
which, ir all countries and ages, has ever 
been too heavy lor one pair of shoulders. 
Tis true, we are endued with an imperfect 
power of spreading our happiness some- 
times beyond her limits ; but 'tis so ordered, 
that, from the want of languages, connex- 
ions, and dependencies, and, from the differ- 
ence in educations, customs, and habits, we 
lie under so many impediments in com- 
municating our sensations out of our own 
sphere, as often amount to a total impos- 
sibility. 

It will always follow from hence, that the 
balance of sentimental commerce is always 
against the expatriated adventurer: he must 
buy what he has little occasion for, at their 
own price ; — his conversation will seldom be 
taken in exchange for theirs without a large 
discount, — and this, by the bye, eternally 
driving him into the hands of more equitable 
brokers, for such conversation as he can find, 
it requires no great spirit of divination to 
guess at his party. 

This brings me to my point, and naturally 
leads me (if the see-saw of this desobligeant 
will but let me get on) into the efficient as 
well as final causes of travelling. 

Your idle people that leave their native 
country, and go abroad for some reason or 
reasons which may be derived from one of 
these general causes : — 

Infirmity of body, 

Imbecility of mind, or 

Inevitable necessity. 
The two first include all those who travel 
by land or by water, laboring with pride, 



cision and nicety, to avoid a conl'usion ol 
character : and these men I speak of are 
such as cross the seas, and sojourn in a land 
of strangers, with a view of saving money, for 
various reasons, and upon various pretences ; 
but, as they might also save themselves and 
others a great deal of unnecessary trouble 
by saving their money at home, — and, as 
their reasons for travelling are the least 
complex of any other species of emigrants, 
I shall distinguish these gentlemen by the 
name of 

Simple Travellers. 
Thus the whole circle of travellers may 
be reduced to the following heads : — 

Idle Travellers, 

Inquisitive Travellers, 

Lying Travellers, 

Proud Travellers, 

Vain Travellers ; 

Splenetic Travellers : 
then follow 

The Travellers of Necessity, 

The Delinquent and Felonious Trav- 
eller, 

The Unfortunate and Innocent Trav- 
eller, 

The Simple Traveller, 
And last of all (if you please) The Senti- 
mental Traveller (meaning thereby myself) 
who have travell'd, and of which I am now 
sitting down to give an account, — as much 
out of Necessity, and the besoin de Voya- 
ger, as any one in the class. 

I am well aware, at the same time, as 
both my travels and observations will be al- 
together of a different cast from -any of my 



curiosity, vanity, or spleen, subdivided and forerunners, that I might have insisted upon 



combined in infinitum. 



la whole niche entirely to myself; — but I 



The third class includes the whole army ' should break in upon the confines of the Vain 



of peregrine martyrs ; more especially those 
travellers who set out upon their travels 
with the benefit of the clergy, either as 
delinquents, travelling under the direction 
of governors recommended by the magis- 
trate ; — or young gentlemen, transported by 
tno cruelty of parents and guardians, and 
travelling under the direction of governors 
recommended by Oxford, Aberdeen, and 
Glasgow. 

There is a fourth class, but their number 
is so small, that they would not. deserve a 
distinction, were it not necessary, in a work 
of this nature, to observe the greatest pre- 



Traveller, in wishing to draw attention to- 
wards me, till I have some better grounds 
for it than the mere Novelty of my Vehicle. 
It is sufficient for my reader, if he has been 
a Traveller himself, that, with study and re- 
flection hereupon, he may be able to deter- 
mine his own place and rank in the cata- 
logue ; — it will be one step towards knowing 
himself, as it is great odds but he retains 
some tincture and resemblance of what he 
imbibed or carried out, to the present hour. 
The man who first transplanted the grape 
of Burgundy to the Cape of Good Hope (ob- 
serve he was a Dutchman) n«^ver dreamt of 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



277 



drinking the same wine at the Cape that 
the same grape produced upon the French 
mountains, — he was too phlegmatic for that; 
— but, undoubtedly, he expected to drink 
some sort of vinous liquor; but whether 
good, bad, or indifferent, — he knew enough 
of this world to know that it did not depend 
upon his choice, but that what, is generally 
called chance was to decide his success: 
however, he hoped for the best; and in these 
hopes, by an intemperate confidence in the 
fortitude of his head, and the depth of his 
discretion, Mynheer might possibly overset 
both in his new vineyard ; and, by discover- 
ing his nakedness, become a laughing-stock 
to his people. 

Even so it fares with the poor Traveller 
sailing and posting through the politer king- 
doms of the globe, in pursuit of knowledge 
and improvements. 

Knowledge and improvements are to be 
got by sailing and posting for that purpose; 
but whether useful knowledge and real im- 
provements are all a lottery ; — and, even 
where the adventurer is successful, the ac- 
quired stock must be used with caution and so- 
briety, to turn to any profit: — but, as the chan- 
ces run prodigiously the other way, both as to 
the acquisition and application, I am of opin- 
ion, That a man would act as wisely, if he 
could prevail upon himself to live contented 
without foreign knowledge or foreign im- 
provements, especially if he lives in a country 
that has no absolute want of either; and in- 
deed much grief of heart has it oft and many 
a time cost me, when I have observed how 
many a foul step the Inquisitive Traveller 
has measured, to see sights and look into 
-discoveries, all which, as Sancho Panca said 
to Don Quixote, they might have seen dry- 
shod at home. It is an age so full of light, 
chat there is scarce a country or corner of 
Europe, whose beams are not crossed and 
interchanged with others. — Knowledge, in 
most of its branches, and in most affairs, is 
nke music in an Italian street, whereof those 
may partake who pay nothing. — But there 
is no nation under Heaven, — and God is my 
record (before whose tribunal I must one 
day come and give an account of this work) 
— that I do not speak it vauntingly, — But 
here is no nation under Heaven abounding 
with more variety of learning, — where the 
sciences may be more fit.lv woo'd, or more 



surely won, than here, — where Art is en- 
couraged, and will soon rise high, — where 
Nature (take her altogether) has so little to 
answer for, — and, to close all, where there 
is more wit and variety of character to feed 
the mind with: — Where, then, my dear 
countrymen, are you going! — 

We are only looking at this chaise, said 
they. — Your most obedient servant, said I, 
skipping out of it, and pulling off my hat 
— We were wondering, said one of them, 
who, I found, was an Inquisitive Traveller, 
— what could occasion its motion. — 'Twa8 
the agitation, said I, coolly, of writing a 
preface. — I never heard, said the other, 
who was a Simple Traveller, of a preface 
wrote in a desobligeant. — It would have 
been better, said I, in a vis-a-vis. 

As an Englishman docs not travel to see 
Englishmen, I retired to my room. 



CALAIS. 



I perceived that something darken'd 
the passage more than myself, as I stepp'd 
along it to my room ; it was effectually 
Mons. Dessein, the master of the hotel, 
who had just returned from vespers, and, 
with his hat under his arm, was most com- 
plaisantly following me, to put me in mind 
of my wants. I had wrote myself pretty 
well out of conceit with the desobligeant ; 
and Mons. Dessein speaking of it with a 
shrug, as if it would no way suit me, it 
immediately struck my fancy that it be- 
longed to some Innocent Traveller, who, 
on his return home, had left it to Mons. 
Dessein's honor to make the most of. Four 
months had elapsed since it had finished its 
career of Europe in the corner of Mons. 
Dessein's coach-yard : and having sallied out 
from thence but a vampt-up business at the 
first, though it had been twice taken to 
pieces on Mount Sennis, it had not profited 
much by its adventures, — but by none so 
little as the standing so many months un- 
pitied in the cornerof Mons. Dessein's coach- 
yard. Much, indeed, was not to be said tor 
it, — but something might, — and, when a few 
words will rescue Misery out of her Distress. 
I hate the man who can be a churl of them. 

— Now, was I the master of this hotel, 
said I, laying the point of my fore-finger on 
24 



<T78 SENTIMENTAL JOURNKV 

Mons. Dwsein's breast, I would inevitably 
make a point of getting 1 rid of this unfortu- 
nate desobligeant ; it stands swinging- re- 
proaches at you every time you pass by it. 

Moji Dieu ! said Mons. Dessein, — I have 
no,, interest. — Except the interest, said I, 
which men of a certain turn of mind take, 
Mons. Dessein, in their own sensations. — 
. J'm persuaded, to a man who feels for others 
as well as for himself, every rainy night 
disguise it as you will, must cast a damp 
upon your spirits. You suffer, Mons. Des- 
sein, as much as the machine. 

I have always observed, when there is as 
much sour as sweet in a compliment, that 
an Englishman is eternally at a loss within 
himself whether to take it or let it alone; a 
Frenchman never is ; Mons. Dessein made 
me a bow. 

Cent hien vrai, said he. — But in this case, 
I should only exchange one disquietude for 
another, and with loss. Figure to yourself, 
my dear Sir, that in giving you a chaise 
which would fall to pieces before you had 
got half-way to Paris, — figure to yourself 
how much I should suffer, in giving an ill 
impression of myself to a man of honor, and 
lying at the mercy, as I must do, dhm 
homme (P esprit. 

The dose was made up exactly after my 
own prescription ; so I could not help taking 
it, — and returning Mons. Dessein his bow, 
without more casuistry we walked together 
towards his remise, to take a view of his 
magazine of chaises. 



IN THE STREET, 



It must needs be a hostile kind of a 
world when the buyer (if it be but of a sorry 
post-chaise) cannot go forth with the seller 
thereof into the street, to terminate the dif- 
ference betwixt them, but he instantly falls 
into the same frame of mind, and views his 
ronventionist with the same sort of eye, as 
it he was going along with him to Hyde 
Hark Corner to fight a duel. For my own 
^art being but a poor swordsman, and 
i.o way a match for Mons. Dessein, I felt 



the rotation of all the movements within me, 
to which the situation is incident ; — I looked 
at Monsieur Dessein through and through, 
— eyed him as he walked along in profile, — 
then en face ; — thought he looked like a 
Jew, — then a Turk, — disliked his wig, curs- 
ed him by my gods, — wished him at the 
Devil ! 

— And is all this to be lighted up in the 
heart for a beggarly account of three or four 
Louis d'ors, which is the most I can be over- 
reached in 1 — Base passion ! said I, turning 
myself about, as a man naturally does upon 
a sudden reverse of sentiment, — base, un- 
gentle passion ! thy band is against every 
man, and every man's hand against thee. — 
Heaven forbid ! said she, raising her hand 
up to her forehead, for I had turned full in 
front upon the lady whom I had seen in con- 
ference with the monk ; — she had followed 
us unperceived. — Heaven forbid, indeed! 
said I, offering- her my own ; — she had a 
black pair of silk gloves, open only at the 
thumb and two fore-fingers, so accepted it 
without reserve, — and I led her up to the 
door of the remise. 

Monsieur Dessein had diabled the key 
above fifty times, before he found out he had 
come with a wrong one in his hand : we 
were as impatient as himself to have it 
open'd ; and so attentive to the obstacle, that 
I continued holding her hand almost without 
knowing it ; so that Mons. Dessein left us 
together, with her hand in mine, and with 
our faces turned towards the door of the 
remise, and said he would be back in five 
minutes. 

Now, a colloquy of five minutes, in such 
a situation, is worth one of as many ages, 
with your faces turned towards the street. 
In the latter case, 'tis drawn from the ob- 
jects and occurrences without ; — when your 
eyes are fixed upon a dead blank, — you 
draw purely from yourselves. A silence of 
a single moment, upon Mons. Dessein's leav- 
ing us, had been fatal to the situation, — she 
had infallibly turned about ; — so I began the 
conversation instantly. 

— But what were the temptations (as I 
write not to apologize for the weaknesses of 
my heart in this tour, — but to give an ac- 
count of them) — shall be described with tha 
same simplicity with which I felt them 



THE REMISE DOOR. 

CALAIS. 



When I told the reader that I did not care 
to get out of the desobligeant, because I 
saw the monk in close conference with the 
lady just arrived at the inn, I told him the 
truth ; but I did not tell him the whole truth ; 
for I was full as much restrained by the ap- 
pearance and figure of the lady he was talk- 
ing to. Suspicion crossed my brain, and 
wnd, he was telling her what had passed: 
something- jarred upon it within me, — I 
wished him at his convent 

When the heart flies out before the un- 
derstanding, it saves the judgment a world 
of pains. — I was certain she was of a better 
order of beings; — however, I thought no 
more of her, but went on and wrote my 
preface. 

The impression returned, upon my en- 
counter with her in the street ; a guarded 
frankness with which she gave me her hand, 
showed, I thought, her good education and 
her good sense ; and, as I led her on, I felt 
a pleasurable ductility about her, which 
spread a calmness over all my spirits. 

— Good God ! how a man might lead such 
a creature as this round the world with 
him ! 

I had not yet seen her face, — 'twas not 
material : for the drawing was instantly set 
about, and, long before we had got to the 
door of the remise, Fancy had finish'd the 
whole head, and pleased herself as much 
with its fitting her goddess, as if she had 
dived into the Tiber for it ; — but thou art 
seduced, and a seducing slut; and albeit 
thou cheatest us seven times a day with thy 
pictures and images, yet with so many 
charms dost thou do it, and thou deckest out 
thy pictures in the shapes of so many angels 
of light, 'tis a shame to break with thee. 

When we had got to the door of the re 
mise, she withdrew her hand from across 
h?r forehead, and let me see the original : 
— it was a face of about six-and-twenty, — 
of a clear transparent brown, simply set off 
without rouge or powder ; — it was not criti- 
cally handsome, but there was that in it 
which, in the frame of mind I was in, at- 
tached me much more to it, — it was inter- 
esting ; I fancied it wore the characters of 
a widow'd look, and in that state of its de- 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 279 

clension which had passed the two first par- 
oxysms of sorrow, and was quietly begin 
ning to reconcile itself to its loss ; — but a 
thousand other distresses might have trace' 1 
the same lines ; I wish'd to know what thev 
had been, — and was ready to inquire (had 
the same bon ton of conversation permitted 
as in the days of Esdras) — " What aileth 
" thee? and why art thou disquieted ? and 
" why is thy understanding troubled . ? " — 
In a word, I felt benevolence for her, and 
resolv'd, some way or other, to throw in my 
mite of courtesy, — if not of service. 

Such were my temptations; and in this 
disposition to give way to them, was I letl 
alone with the lady, with her hand in mine, 
and with our faces both turned closer to the 
door of the remise than what was absolutely 
necessary. 



THE REMISE DOOR. 

CALAIS. 

This certainly, fair lady, said I, raising 
her hand up a little lightly as I began, must 
be one of Fortune's whimsical doings ; to 
take two utter strangers by their hands, — 
of different sexes, and, perhaps, from differ- 
ent corners of the globe, and in one moment 
place them together in such a cordial situa- 
tion as Friendship herself could scarce have 
achieved for them, had she projected it for 
a month. 

— And your reflection upon it shows how 
much, Monsieur, she has embarrassed you 
by the adventure. 

When the situation is what we would 
wish, nothing is so ill-timed as tonint at the 
circumstances which make it so. — You 
thank Fortune, continued she — you had rea- 
son, — the heart knew it, and was satisfied ; 
and who but an English philosopher would 
have sent notice of it to the brain to reverse 
the judgment] 

In saying this, she disengaged her hand, 
with a look which I thougnt a sufficient 
commentary upon the text. 

It is a miserable picture which 1 am going 
to give of the weakness of my heart, by 
owning that it suffered a pain, which wor- 
thier occasions could not have inflicted. - 1 
was mortified with the 1 >ss of her hand , ar.i! 
the manner in which I had lost it, carried 



280 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 



neither oil nor wine to the wound ; I never 
felt the pain of a peevish inferiority so mis- 
erably in my life. 

The triumphs of a true feminine heart 
are short upon these discomfitures. In a 
very few seconds she laid her hand upon the 
cuff of my coat, in order to finish her reply ; 
so, some way or other, God knows how, I 
regained my situation. 

— She had nothing to add. 

I forthwith began to model a different con- 
versation for the lady, thinking, from the 
spirit as well as moral of this, that I had 
been mistaken in her character ; but, upon 
turning her face towards me, the spirit 
which had animated the reply was fled, — 
the muscles relaxed, and I saw the same 
unprotected look of distress which first won 
me to her interest: — melancholy! to see 
such sprightliness the prey of sorrow, — I 
pitied her from my soul ; and, though it 
may seem ridiculous enough to a torpid 
heart, — I could have taken her into my 
arms, and cherished her, though it was in 
the open street, without blushing. 

The pulsations of the arteries along my 
fingers pressing across hers, told her what 
was passing within me. She looked down : 
— a silence of some moments followed. 

I fear, in this interval, I must have made 
some slight efforts towards a closer com- 
pression of her hand, from a subtle sensa- 
tion I felt in the palm of my own, — not as 
if she was going to withdraw hers, — but as 
if she thought about it; — and I had infalli- 
bly lost it a second time, had not instinct, 
more than reason, directed me to the last 
resource in these dangers, — to hold it loose- 
ly, and in a manner as if I was every mo- 
ment going to release it of myself: so she 
let it continue till Mons. Dessein returned 
with the key ; and, in the mean time, I set 
myself to consider how I should undo the 
ill impressions which the poor monk's story, 
in case he had told it her, must have planted 
in her breast against me. 



THE SNUFF-BOX. 

CALAIS. 

Thr good old monk was within six paces 

t*l us as the idea of him cross'd my mind ; 

d was advancing towards us a little out 



of the line, as if uncertain whether he 
should break in upon us or no. — He stopp'd, 
however, as soon as he came up to us, with 
a world of frankness, and having a horn 
snuff-box in his hand, he presented it open 
to me. — You shall taste mine, said I, pulling 
out my box (which was a small tortoise one\ 
and putting it into his hand. — 'Tis most 
excellent, said the monk. — Then do me the 
favor, I replied, to accept of the box and 
all ; and when you take a pinch out of it, 
sometimes recollect it was the peace-offer- 
ing of a man who once used you unkindly, 
but not from his heart. 

The poor monk blush'd as red as scarlet, 
Mon Dieu ! said he, pressing his hands to- 
gether, — you never used me unkindly. — 1 
should think, said the lady, he is not likely. 
— I blush'd in my turn ; but from what 
movements, I leave to the few who feel, to 
analyze. — Excuse me, Madam, replied I, — 
I treated him most unkindly; and from no 
provocations. — 'Tis impossible, said the 
lady. — My God ! cried the monk, with a. 
warmth of asseveration which seemed not 
to belong to him, — the fault was in me, and 
in the indiscretion of my zeal. — The lady 
opposed it: and I joined with her, — in main- 
taining it was impossible that a spirit so 
regulated as his could give offence to any. 
I knew not that contention could be ren- 
dered so sweet and pleasurable a thing to 
the nerves as I then felt it. We remained 
silent, without any sensation of that foolish 
pain which takes place, when, in such a 
circle, you look for ten minutes in one an- 
other's faces without saying a word. Whilst 
this lasted, the monk rubb'd his horn-box 
upon the sleeve of his tunic: and as soon 
as it had acquired a little air of brightness 
by the friction, he made a low bow, and said. 
'Twas too late to say whether it was the 
weakness or goodness of our tempers which 
had involved us in this contest; — but, be it 
as it would, — he begged we might exchange 
boxes. — In saying this, he presented his to 
me with one hand, as he took mine from 
me in the other; and having kissed it. — 
with a stream of good-nature in his eyes, 
he put it into his bosom, — and took his 
leave. 

I guard this box as I would *he instru- 
mental parts of my religion, to help my 
mind on to something better. In truth, ) 



THE REMISE DOOR. 

CALAIS. 

I had never quitted the lady's hand all 
this time; and had held it so long, that it 
would have been indecent to have let it go, 
without first pressing it to my lips: the 
blood and spirits, which had suffered a re- 
vulsion from her, crowded back to her as I 
did it. 

Now the two travellers, who had spoke 
to me in the coach-yard, happened at the 
crisis to be passing by, and, observing our 
.♦ommunications, naturally took it into their 
neads that we must be man and wife at 
least ; and so stopping as soon as they came 
jp to the door of the remise, the one of 
them, who was the Inquisitive Traveller, 
ask'd us if we set out for Paris the next 
morning ) — I could only answer for myself, 
I said ; — and the lady added, she was for 
A. miens. — We dined there yesterday, said 
2L 



the Simple Traveller. 

through the town, added ihe other 



xid to P 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 

seldom go abroad without it; — and oft and 
many a time have I called up by it the 
courteous spirit of its owner to regulate my 
own, in the justlings of the world : they 
had found full employment for his, as I 
learnt from his story, till about the forty- 
fifth year of his age, when, upon some mili- 
tary services ill requited, and meeting at 
the same time with a disappointment in the 
tenderest of passions, he abandoned the 
sword and the sex together, and took sanc- 
tuary, not so much in his convent as in 
himself. 

I feel a damp upon my spirits as I am 
goinor to add, that in my last return through 
Calais, upon inquiring after Father Loren- 
zo, I heard he had been dead near three 
months; and was buried, not in his convent, 
but according to his desire, in a little ceme- 
tery belonging to it, about two leagues off. 
I had a strong desire to see where they had 
laid him, — when upon pulling out his little 
horn-box, as I sat by his grave, and pluck- 
ing up a nettle or two at the head of it, 
which had no business to grow there, they 
all struck together so forcibly upon my af- 
fections, that I burst into a flood of tears; 
— but I am as weak as a woman ; and I beg 
the world not to smile, but pity me. 



281 

You go directly 
, in your 



I was goin.q - to return a 



thousand thanks for the intelligence that 
Amiens was in the road to Paris : but upon 
pulling out my poor monk's little horn-box 
to take a pinch of snuff, I made them a 
quiet bow, and wished them a good passage 
to Dover. — They left us alone. 

Now where would be the harm, said I to 
myself, if I was to beg of this distressed 
lady to accept of half of my chaise ? — and 
what mighty mischief would ensue] 

Every dirty passion and bad propensity 
in my nature took the alarm as I stated the 
proposition ; — It will oblige you to have a 
third horse, said Avarice, which will put 
twenty livres out of your pocket. — You 
know not what she is, said Caution ; or 
what scrapes the affair may draw you into, 
whisper'd Cowardice. 

— Depend upon it, Yoriek, said Discre* 
Hon, 'twill be said you went off with a mis- 
tress ; and came, by assignation, to Calais 
for that purpose. 

— You can never after, cried Hypocrisy, 
aloud, show your face in the world ; — nor 
rise, quoth Meanness, in the church ; — nor 
be any thing in it, said Pride, but a lousy 
prebendary. 

But 'tis a civil thing, said I ; — and as F 
generally act from the first impulse, and 
therefore seldom listen to these cabals, 
which serve no purpose that I know of, but 
to encompass the heart with adamant, — I 
turn'd instantly about to the lady, — 

But she had glided off unpercehed, as 
the cause was pleading, and had made ten 
or a dozen paces down the street by the 
time I had made the determination ; so T 
set off after her with a long stride, to make 
her the proposal with the best address I 
was master of; but observing she walkM 
with her cheek half resting upon the palm 
of her hand, — with the slow, short-measur'd 
step of though tfulness, and with her eyes, 
as she went step by step, fixed upon the 
ground, it struck me she was trying the 
same case herself. — God help her ! said I, 
she has some mother-in-law, or tartufish 
aunt, or nonsensical old W( man, to consult 
upon the occasion, as well as myself: 9v. 
not caring to interrupt the process, and 
deeming it more gallant to take her ili» 
24* 



282 

cretion thai, surprise, I faced about, and 
took a short turn or two before the door of 
the remise, whilst she walk'd musing- on 
one side. 



IN THE STREET. 

CALAIS. 



Having, on first sight of the lady, set- 
led the affair in my fancy, " that she was 

of the better order of being's;" — and then 
laid it down as a second axiom, as indispu- 
table as the first, That she was a widow, 
and wore a character of distress, — I went 
no further; I got ground enough for the 
situation which pleased me ; — and had she 
remained close beside my elbow till mid- 
night, I should have held true to my sys- 
tem, and considered her only under that 
general idea. 

She had scarce got twenty paces distant 
from me, ere something within me called 
out for a more particular inquiry; — it 
brought on the idea of a further separation : 
— I might possibly never see her more : — 
the heart is for saving what it can ; and I 
wanted the traces through which my wishes 
might find their way to her, in case I should 
never rejoin her myself. In a word, I 
wish'd to know her name, — her family, — 
her condition; — and as I knew the place to 
which she was going, I wanted to know 
from whence she came : but there was no 
coming at all this intelligence : a hundred 
little delicacies stood in the way. I form'd 
a score different plans. — There was no 
such thing as a man's asking her directly ; 
— the thing was impossible. 

A little French debonnaire captain, who 
came dancing down the street, showed me 
it was the easiest thing in the world; — for, 
popping in betwixt us, just as the lady was 
returning back to the door of the remise, 
he introduced himself to my acquaintance, 
and before he had well got announced, 
begg'd I would do him the honor to present 
nun to the lady. — I had not been presented 
myself; — so turning about to her, he did it 
just as well, by asking her if she had come 
from Paris 1 — No ; she was going that 
route, she said. — Vous rfetr* pas de Lon- 
./re.« '--She was not, she reolied. — Then 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

Madame must have come through Flanders. 

Apparemment vous etes Flammande? 
said the French captain. — The lody an- 
swered, she was. — Peut-etre de Lisle 1 
added he. — She answered, she was not of 
Lisle. — Nor Arras 1 — nor Cambray 1 — nor 
Ghent 1 — nor Brussels I — She answered, 
she was of Brussels. 

-He had had the honor, he said, to be 
at the bombardment of it last war ; — that 
it was finely situated, pour cela, — and full 
of noblesse when the Imperialists were 
driven out by the French (the lady made a 
slight curtsey ;) — so giving her an account 
of the affair, and of the share he had had 
in it, — he begg'd the honor to know her 
name, — so made his bow. 

— Et Madame a son Mari? said he, 
looking back when he had made two steps, 
— and, without staying for an answer, — 
danced down the street. 

Had I served seven years' apprenticeship 
to good-breeding, I could not have done as 
much. 



THE REMISE. 



CALAIS. 



As the little French captain left us, 
Mons. Dessein came up with the key of 
the remise in his hand, and forthwith let us 
into his magazine of chaises. 

The first object which caught my eye, as 
Mons. Dessein open'd the door of the remise, 
was another old ta.tter'd desobligeant ; and, 
notwithstanding it was the exact picture 
of that which had hit my fancy so much in 
the coach-yard but an hour before, — the 
very sight of it stirr'd up a disagreeable 
sensation within me now ; and I thought 
'twas a churlish beast into whose heart the 
idea could first enter to construct such a 
machine ; nor had I much more charity for 
the man who could think of using it. 

I observed the lady was as little taken 
with it as myself: so Mons. Dessein led us 
on to a couple of chaises which stood 
abreast, telling us, as he recommended 
them, that they had been purchased bv my 
Lord A. and B. to go the grand tour, ^it 
had gone no further than Paris; so w*«*f% 
in all respects, as good as new. — Th«?v 



were too good; — so I pass'd on to a third, 
which stood behind, and forthwith began 
to chaffer for the price. — But 'twill scarce 
hold two, said I, opening the door and get- 
ting in. — Have the goodness, Madam, said 
Mons. Dessein, offering his arm, to step in. 
— The lady hesitated half a second, and 
stepp'd in; and the waiter that moment 
beckoning to speak to Mons. Dessein, he 
shut the door of the chaise upon us, and 
"eft us. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 283 

of commerce a mzn betrays, who ever let? 
the word come out of his lips till an hour or 
two at least after the time that his silenor 
upon it becomes tormenting ! A course of 
small, quiet attentions, not so pointed as to 
alarm, — nor so vague as to be misunder- 
stood, — witii now and then a look of kind 
ness, and little or nothing said upon it,— 
leaves Nature for your mistress, and she 
fashions it to her mind. 

— Then I solemnly declare, said the lady, 
blushing, — you have been making love to 
me all this while. 



THE REMISE DOOR. 



Cest bien comique, 'tis very droll, said 
the lady smiling, from the reflection that 
this was the second time we had been left 
together by a parcel of nonsensical contin- 
gencies, — c'est bien comique, said she. 

— There wants nothing, said I, to make 
it so, but the comic use which the gallantry 
of a Frenchman would put it to, — to make 
love the first moment, — and an offer of his 
person the second. 

— 'Tis their fort, replied the lady. 

— It is supposed so at least ; — and how it 
has come to pass, continued I, I know not ; 
but they have certainly got the credit of 
understanding more of love, and making it 
better, than any other nation upon earth ; 
but for my own part, I think them arrant 
bunglers ; and, in truth, the worst set of 
marksmen that ever tried Cupid's patience. 

— To think of making love by sentiments ! 

I should as soon think of making a gen- 
teel suit of clothes out of remnants ; — and 
to do it, — pop, — at first sight by declaration, 
— is submitting the offer, and themselves 
with it, to be sifted with all their pours and 
contrrs, by an unheated mind. 

The lady attended as if she expected I 
should go on. 

— Consider then, Madam, continued I, 
laying my hand upon hers, — 

That grave people hate Love for the 
name's sake, — 

That sel fish people hate it for their own, — 

Hypocrites for Heaven's, — 

And that all of us, both old and young, 
being ten times worse frightened than hurt 
by the very report, 

What a want of knowledge in this branch 



THE REMISE. 

CALAIS. 

Monsieur Dessein came back to let us 
out of the chaise, and acquaint the lady that 

Count de L , her brother, was just arrived 

at the hotel. Though I had infinite good- 
will for the lady, I cannot say that I rejoiced 
in my heart at the event, — and could not 
help telling her so ; — for it is fatal to a pro- 
posal, Madam, said I, that I was going to 
make to you. 

— You need not tell me what the proposal 
was, said she, laying her hand upon both 
mine, as she interrupted me. — A man, my 
good Sir, has seldom an offer of kindness to 
make to a woman, but she has a presenti- 
ment of it some moments before. 

— Nature arms her with it, said I, for im- 
mediate preservation. — But I think, said she, 
looking in my face, I had no evil to appre- 
hend ; — and, to deal frankly with you, had 
determined to accept it. — If I had — (she 
stopped a moment) — I believe your good- 
will would have drawn a story from me, 
which would have made pity the only dan- 
gerous thing in the journey. 

In saying this, she suffered me to kiss her 
hand twice ; and, with a look of sensibility 
mixed with concern, she got out of the 
chaise, — and bid adieu. 



IN THE STREET. 

CALAIS. 

I never finished a twelve-guinea bargain 
so expeditiously in my life. My time seemed 



*>84 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

I! 



hcavv upon the loss of the lady ; and know- jhad fallen foul upon the goddess, and used 
ing every moment of it would be as two, till her worse than a common strumpet, with- 



I put myself into motion, — I ordered post- 
horses directly, and walked towards the 
hotel. 

Lord ! said I, hearing" the town-clock 
strike four, and recollecting that I had been 
little more than a single hour in Calais, — 

What a large volume of adventures may 
be grasped within this little span of life, by 
him who interests his heart in every thing, 
and who, having eyes to see what time and 
chance are perpetually holding out to him 
as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing 
he can fairly lay his hands on ! 

— If this won't turn out something, — an- 
other will ; — no matter, — 'tis an essay upon 
human nature; — I get my labor for my 
pains, — 'tis enough; — the pleasure of the 
experiment has kept my senses and the best 
part of my blood awake, and laid the gross 
to sleep. 

I pity the man who can travel from Dan 
to Beersheba, and cry, 'Tis all barren; — 
and so it is: and so is all the world to him 
who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. I 
declare, said I, clapping my hands cheerily 



out the least provocation in nature. 

I popp'd upon Smelfungus again at. Turin, 
in his return home; and a sad tale of sor- 
rowful adventures he had to tell, "wherein 
"he spoke of moving accidents by flood and 
"field, and of the cannibals who each other 
" eat : the Anthropophagi." — He had bepti 
flay'd alive, and bedevil'd, and used worse 
than St. Bartholomew, at every stage he 
had come at. — 

I'll tell it, cried Smelfungus, to the world. 
— You had better tell it, said I, to your 
physician. 

Mundungus, with an immense fortune, 
made the whole tour ; going on from Rome 
to Naples, — from Naples to Venice, — from 
Venice to Vienna, — to Dresden, to Berlin, 
without one generous connexion or pleas- 
urable anecdote to tell of; but he had trav- 
ell'd straight on, looking neither to his 
right hand nor his left, lest Love or Pity 
should seduce him out of his road. 

Peace be to them, if it is to be found ; 
but Heaven itself, was it possible to get 
there with such tempers, would want ob- 



together, that was I in a desert, I would 'jects to give it; — every gentle spirit would 
find out wherewith in it to call forth my af-jcome flying upon the wings of Love to hail 
fections: — if I could not do better, I would.j their arrival. — Nothing would the souls of 
fasten them upon some sweet myrtle, or seek j Smelfungus and Mundungus hear of, but 
some melancholy cypress to connect myself j fresh anthems of joy, fresh raptures of love, 
to; — I would court their shade, and greet and fresh congratulations of their common 



them kindly for their protection; — I would 
cut my name upon them, and swear they 
were the loveliest trees throughout the 
desert ; — if their leaves withered, I would 
teach myself to mourn: — and when they 
rejoiced, 1 would rejoice along with them. 

The learned Smelfungus travelled from 
Boulogne to Paris, — from Paris to Rome, — 
and so on ; — but he set out with the spleen 
and jaundice ; and every object he pass'd by 
was discolored or distorted. — He wrote an 
nccount of them ; but 'twas nothing but the 
account of his miserable feelings. 

1 met Smelfungus in the grand portico 



felicity. — I heartily pity them : they have 
brought up no faculties for this work : and 
was the happiest mansion in Heaven to be 
allotted to Smelfungus and Mundungus, 
they would be so far from being happy, that 
the souls of Smelfungus and Mundungus 
would do penance there to all eternity ! 



MONTRIUL. 



I had once lost my portmanteau from 
behind my chaise, and twice got out in the 



of the Pantheon : — he was just coming out rain, and one of the times up to the knees 
uf it. — 'Tis nothing but a huge cock-pit ,* in dirt, to help the postilion to tie it on, 



«aid he. — I wish you had said nothing worse 
of the Venus of Medicis, replied I ; — for in 



without being able to find out what was 
wanting. — Nor was it till I got to Montriul, 



Dassinff through Florence, 1 had heard he upon the landlord's asking me if I wanted 
not a servant, that it occurred to me the 



* VideS 's Travels. 



| thai was the very tiling. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 

A servant! that I do, most sadly, quotl 



2S5 



f. — Because, Monsieur, said the landlord, 
there is a clever young fellow, who would 
be very proud of the honor to serve an Eng- 
lishman. — But why an English one more 
than any other] — They are so generous, 
said the landlord. — I'll be shot if this is not 
a livre out of my pocket, quoth I to myself, 
this very night. — But they have where- 
withal to be so, Monsieur, added he. — Set 
down one livre more for that, quoth I. — It 
was hat last night, said the landlord, quhin 
my Lord Anglo is presentoit un ecu a la 
Ulle de chambre. — Tant pis, pour Made- 
moiselle Janatone, said I. 

Now Janatone being the landlord's daugh- 
ter, and the landlord supposing I was young 
in French, took the liberty to inform me, I 
should not have said tant pis; — but tant 
mieux. —Tant mieux, toujours, Monsieur, 
said he, when there is any thing to be got; 
— tant pis, when there is nothing. — It 
comes to the same thing, said I. — Pardonnez 
•moi, said the landlord. 

I cannot take a fitter opportunity to ob- 
serve, once for all, that tant pis and tant 
mieux being two of the great hinges in 
French conversation, a stranger would do 
well to set himself right in the use of 
them, before he gets to Paris. 

A prompt French Marquis at our Ambas- 
sador's table, demanded of Mr. H , if he 

vas H the poet? — No, said Mr. H , 

<nildly. — Tant pis, replied the Marquis. 

— It is H the historian, said an- 
other. — Tant mieux, said the Marquis. — 
And Mr. H , who is a man of an ex- 
cellent heart, return'd thanks for both. 

When the landlord had set me right in 
this matter, he called in La Fleur, which 
was the name of the young man he had 
spoke of, —saying only first, That as for his 
talents, he would presume to say nothing — 
Monsieur was the best judge what would 
suit him ; but for the fidelity of La Fleur, 



MONTRIUL. 



I am apt to be taken with all kinds of 
people at first sight; but never more so 
than when a poor Devil comes to oiler his 
service to so poor a Devil as myself; and 
as I know this weakness, I always suffer 
my judgment to draw back something on 
that very account, — and this more or less, 
according to the mood I am in, and the 
case ; — and, I may add, the gender too of 
the person I am to govern. 

When La Fleur entered the room, after 
every discount I could make for my soul, 
the genuine look and air of the fellow de- 
termined the matter at once in his favor 
so I hired him at first, — and then began to 
inquire what he could do. — But I shall find 
out his talents, quoth I, as I want them ; — 
besides, a Frenchman can do every thing. 

Now poor La Fleur could do nothing 1 ir 
the world but beat a drum, and play a march 
or two upon the fife. I was determined to 
make his talents do; and can't say my weak- 
ness was ever so insulted by my wisdom as 
in the attempt. 

La Fleur had set out early in life, as 
gallantly as most Frenchmen do, with serv- 
ing for a few years: at the end of which, 
having satisfied the sentiment, and found, 
moreover, that the honor of beating a drum 
was Lkely to be its own reward, as it open'd 
no further track of glory to him, he retired 
a ses terns, and lived comme il plaisoit a 
Dieu ; — thai is to say, upon nothing. 

— And so, quoth Wisdom, you have hired 
a drummer to attend yon in this tour of 
yours through France and Italy ! — Fshaw ! 
said I, and do not one half of our gentry 
go with a humdrum compagnon du voyage 
the same round, and have the piper and the 
Devil and all to pay besides] When a man 
can extricate himself with an equivoque in 
such an unequal match, — he is not ill off.- 
But you can do something else, La Fleur 



he would stand responsible in all he was! said I. — O qu'oui ! he could make spatter 



worth. 

The landlord delivered this in a manner 
which instantly set my mind to the business 
I was upon; — and La Fleur, who stood 
waiting without, in that breathless expecta- 
tion which every son of Nature of us have 
felt in our turns, came in. 



dashes, and play a little upon the fiddle.— 
Bravo! said Wisdom. — Why I pJay a bass 
myself, said I; — we shall do very Well. 
You can shave and dress a wig a htile, La 
Fleur] — He had all the dispositions in the 
world. — It is enough for Heaven, said I in- 
terrupting him, — and ought to be enough 



286 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



for me. — So supper coming in, and having 
a frisky English spaniel on one side of my 
cnair, and a French valet, with as much 
hilarity in his countenance as ever Nature 
painted in one, on the other, — I was satis- 
fied to my heart's content with my empire; 
and if monarchs knew what they would he 
at, they might be as satisfied as I was. 



MONTRIUL. 



As La Fleur went the whole tour of 
France and Italy with me, and will be often 
upon the stage, I must interest the reader 
a little further in his behalf, by saying, that 
I had never less reason to repent of the im- 
pulses which generally do determine me, 
than in regard to this fellow ; — he was a 
faithful, affectionate, simple soul as ever 
trudged after the heels of a philosopher; 
and notwithstanding his talents of drum- 
beating and spatterdash-making, which, 
though very good in themselves, happened 
to be of no great service to me, yet was I 
hourly recompensed by the festivity of his 
temper; — it supplied all defects: — I had a 
constant resource in his looks, in all diffi- 
culties and distresses of my own — (I was 
going to have added, of his too ;) but La 
Fleur was out of the reach of every thing; 
for whether it was hunger or thirst, or cold 
or nakedness, or watchings, or whatever 
stripes of ill luck La Fleur met with in our 
journeyings, there was no index in his physi- 
ognomy to point them out by, — he was 
eternally the same ; so that if I am a piece 
of a philosopher, which Satan now and then 
puts it into my head I am, — it always mor- 
tifies the pride of the conceit by reflecting 
how much I owe to the complexional phi- 
losophy of this poor fellow, for shaming me 
into one of a better kind. With all this, La 
Fleur had a small cast of the coxcomb; — 
but he seemed, at first sight, to be more 
a coxcomb of nature than of art ; and be- 
fore I had been three days in Paris with 
him, — he seemed to be no coxcomb at all. 



MONTRIUL. 

TnE next morning, La ^leur entering 
jfion his enirnoyraent, I delivered to him 



the key of my portmanteau, witn an in- 
ventory of my half a dozen shirts and a silk 
pair of breeches ; and bid him fasten all 
upon the chaise, — get the horses put to, — 
and desire the landlord to come in with his 
bill. 

— C'est un gar con de bonne fortune, said 
the landlord, pointing through the window 
to half a dozen wenches who had got round 
about La Fleur, and were most kindly taking 
leave of him as the postilion was leading 
out the horses. La Fleur kissed all their 
hands round and round again, and thrice 
he wiped his eyes, and thrice he promised 
he would bring them all pardons from 
Rome. 

— The young fellow, said the landlord, 
is beloved by all the town; and there is 
scarce a corner in Montriul where the want 
of him will not be felt. He has but one 
misfortune in the world, continued he, " He 
is always in love." — I am heartily glad of 
it, said I ; 'twill save me the trouble every 
night of putting my breeches under my 
head. In saying this, I was making not so 
much La Fleur's eloge as my own, having 
been in love with one Princess or other al- 
most all my life, and I hope I shall go on 
so till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if 
ever I do a mean action, it must be in some 
interval betwixt one passion and another : 
whilst this interregnum lasts, I always per- 
ceive my heart locked up, — I can scarce 
find in it to give misery a sixpence : and 
therefore I always get out of it as fast as I 
can ; and the moment I am rekindled, I am 
all generosity and good-will again ; an<i 
would do any thing in the world, either foi 
or with any one, if they will but satisfy m* 
there is no sin in it. 

— But in saying this, — sure I am cok> 
mending the passion, — not myself. 



A FRAGMENT. 

— The town of Abdera, notwithstandirg 
Democritus lived there, trying all the pow 
ers of irony and laughter to reclaim it, was 
the vilest and most profligate town in all 
Thrace. What for poisons, conspiracies, and 
assassinations, — libels, pasquinades, and tu- 
mults, there was no going there by ilay : — 
'twas worse by night 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



287 



Now, when things were at the worst, it 
came to pass, that Andromeda of Euripides 
feeing represented at Ahdera, the whole 
orchestra was delighted with it; but of all 
the passages which delighted them, nothing 
operated more upon their imaginations than 
the tender strokes of nature which the poet 
had wrought up in that pathetic speech of 
Perseus, O Cupid, prince of Gods and men, 
&c. Every man almost spoke pure iambics 
the next day, and talk'd of nothing but 
Perseus, his pathetic address, — " O Cupid, 
" prince of Gods and men !" in every street 
of Abdera, in every house, — " O Cupid ! 
«* Cupid !" in every mouth, like the natural 
notes of some sweet melody which drop 
from it, whether it will or no, — nothing but 
"Cupid! Cupid ! prince of Gods and men !" 
— The fire caught, — and the whole city, 
like the heart of one man, open'd itself to 
Love. 

No pharmacopolist could sell one grain 
of hellebore, — not a single armorer had a 
heart to forge one instrument of death ; — 
Friendship and Virtue met together and 
siss'd each other in the street ; — the golden 
age returned, and hung over the town of 
Abdera; — every Abderite took his oaten 
pipe ; and every Abderitish woman left her 
purple web, and chastely sat her down, and 
listened to the song. 

— 'Twas only in the power, says the Frag- 
ment, of the God whose empire extendeth 
from Heaven to earth, and even to the 
depths of the sea, to have done this. 



MONTRIUL. 

When all this is ready and every article 
is disputed and paid for at the inn, unless 
you are a little soured by the adventure, 
there is always a matter to compound at 
the door, before you can get into your chaise, 
and that is, with the sons and daughters of 
poverty who surround you. Let no man 
say, " Let them go to the Devil !" — 'tis a 
cruel journey to send a few miserables; and 
they have had sufferings enow without it. 
I always think it better to take a few sous 
out in my hand ; and I would counsel every 
gentle traveller to do so likewise ; he need 
not be so exact in setting down his motives 



for giving them ; — they will be register'd 
elsewhere. 

For my own part, there is no man gives 
so little as I do; for few, that 1 know, have 
so little to give: but as this was the first 
public act of my charity in France, I took 
the more notice of it. 

— A well-a-way ! said I, — I have but 
eight sous in the world, showing them in 
my hand, and there are eight poor men and 
eight poor women for 'em. 

A poor tatter'd soul, without a shirt on, 
instantly withdrew his claim, by retiring 
two steps out of the circle, and making a 
disqualifying bow on his part. Had the 
whole parterre cried out, Place aux dames, 
with one voice, it would not have conveyed 
the sentiment of a deference for the sex 
with half the effect. 

Just Heaven ! for what wise reasons hast 
thou ordered it, that beggary and urbanity, 
which are at such variance in other coun- 
tries, should find a way to be at unity in 
this? 

I insisted upon presenting him with a 
single sous, merely for his politesse. 

A poor little dwartish brisk fellow, who 
stood over-against me in the circle, putting 
something first under his arm, svhich had 
once been a hat, took his snuff-box out of his 
pocket, and generously offer'd a pinch on 
both sides of him: it was a gift of conse- 
quence, and modestly declined. — The poor 
little fellow press'd it upon them with a nod 
of welcomeness. — Prencz-en, — prenez, said 
he, looking another way ; so they each took 
a pinch. — Pity thy box should ever want 
one, said I to myself; so I put a couple of 
sous into it, — taking a small pinch out of 
his box to enhance their value, as I did it. — 
He felt the weight of the second obligation 
more than of the first, — 'twas doing him an 
honor, — the other was only doing him a 
charity ; — and he made me a bow to the 
ground for it. 

— Here ! said I to an old soldier with one 
hand, who had been campaign"d and worn 
out to death in the service, — here's a couple 
of sous for thee. — Vive le Roi I said the old 
soldier. 

I had then but three sous left: so I gnvH 
one, simply pour V amour de Dieu, which 
was the footing on which it was begg'd 



2S8 

The poor woman had a dislocated hip ; so it 
could not be well upon any other motive. 

Mon cher et tres-charitable, Monsieur. 
—There's no opposing- this, said I. 

My Lord Anglois ; — the very sound was 
worth the money : — so I gave my last sous 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

it than Diable ! so presently got up, and 
came to the charge again astride his bidet, 
beating him up to it as he would have beat 
his drum. 

The bidet flew from one side of the road 
to the other, then back again, then this way, 



for it. But, in the eagerness of giving, I then that way, and, in short, every way 



had overlooked a pauvre honteux, who had 
no one to ask a sous for him, and who, I be- 
lieve, would have perish'd ere he could have 
ask'd one for himself; he stood by the chaise, 



but by the dead ass: — La Fleur insisted 
upon the thing, — and the bidet threw him. 
— What's the matter, La Fleur, said I, 
with this bidet of thine ? — Monsieur, said 



a little without the circle, and wiped a tear he, c'est un cheval le plus opiniatre du 
from a face which I thought had seen better ! monde. — Nay, if he is a conceited beast, 
days. Good God ! said I, and I have not one he must go his own way, replied I. — So La 
single sous left to give him. — But you have; Fleur got off him, and giving him a good 
a thousand ! cried all the powers of Nature, sound lash, the bidet took me at my word, 
stirring within me ; — so gave him — no mat- and away he scampered back to Montriul. — 
ter what, — I am ashamed to say how much Peste ! said La Fleur. 
now, — and was ashamed to think how little It is not mal-a-propos to take notice here, 
then ; so if the reader can form any conjee- that though La Fleur availed himself but of 
ture of my disposition, as these two fixed two different terms of exclamation in this 
points are given him, he may judge within encounter, — namely, Diable! and Peste! 
a livre or two what was the precise sum. that there are, nevertheless, three in the 
I could afford nothing for the rest, but French language, like the positive, compa- 
Dieu vous benisse. — Et le bon Dieu vous rative, and superlative, one or the other of 
benisse encore, said the old soldier, the which serve for every unexpected throw of 
dwarf, &c. The pauvre honteux could say the dice in life. 

nothing, — he pull'd out a little handkerchief, Le Diable ! which is the first and positive 
and wiped his face as he turned away ; — and degree, is generally used in ordinary emo- 



thouo-ht he thanked me more than them all. 



THE BIDET. 

Having settled all these little matters, I 
£,ot into my post-chaise with more ease than 
ever I got into a post-chaise in my life ; and 
La Fleur having got one large jack-boot on 
the far side of a little bidet* and another on 
this (for I count nothing of his legs) he can- 
ter'd before me as happy and as perpendicu- 
lar as a prince. 

— But what is happiness? what is gran- 
deur in this painted scene of life 7 — A dead 
ass. befo.c we got a league, put a sudden 
stop to La Fleur's career ; his bidet would 
not pass by it, — a contention arose betwixt 
tli»;m, and the poor fellow was kick'd out of 
his jack-boots the very first kick. 

La Fleur bore his fall like a French 
Christian, saying neither more nor less upon 

* Post-horse. 



tions of the mind, where small things only 
fall out contrary to your expectations, — such 
as — the throwing one's doublets,— La Fleur's 
being kick'd off his horse, and so forth. — 
Cuckoldom, for the same reason, is always 
Le Diable! 

But in cases where the cast has something 
provoking in it, as in that of the Bidet's 
running away after, and leaving La Fleur 
aground in jack-boots, — 'tis the secoi-d de- 
gree. 

'Tis then Peste ! 

And for the third — 

— But here my heart is wrung with pity 
and fellow-feeling, when I reflect what mis- 
eries must have been their lot, and Low bit- 
terly so refined a people must have smarted, 
to have forced them upon the use of it. 

— Grant me, O ye powers which touch the 
tongue with eloquence in distress ! — what- 
ever is my cast, grant me but decent words 
to exclaim in, and I will give my nature 
way. 

— But as these were not to be had in 
France, I resolved to take every evil iust 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



289 



43 it befell me, without any exclamation at 
all. 

La Fleur, who had made no such covenant 
with himself, followed the Bidet with his 
eyes till it was got out of sight, — and then, 
vou may imagine, if you please, with what 
word he closed the whole affair. 

As there was no hunting down a fright- 
<?n'd horse in jack-hoots, there remained no 
alternative but taking La Fleur either be- 
hind the chaise or into it. — 

I preferred the latter, and, in half an 
hour, we got to the post-house at Nampont. 



NAMPONT. 



THE DEAD ASS. 

— And this, said he, putting the remains 
of a crust into his wallet, — and this should 
have been thy portion, said he, hadst thou 
been alive to have shared it with me. — I 
thought, hy the accent, it had been an apos- 
trophe to his child ; but 'twas to his ass, 
and to the very ass we had seen dead in 
the road, which had occasioned La Fleur's 
aiisad venture. The man seemed to lament 
it much ; and it instantly brought into my 
mind Sancho's lamentation for his; but he 
did it with more true touches of nature. 

The mourner was sitting upon a stone 
bench at the door, with the ass's pannel and 
ts bridle on one side, which he took up 
from time to time, — then laid them down, 
— look'd at them, and shook his head. He 
then took his crust of bread out of his wal- 
let again, as if to eat it, held it some time 
in his hand, — then laid it upon the bit of 
his ass's bridle, — look'd wistfully at the 
little arrangement he had made, — and then 
gave a sigh. 

The simplicity of his grief drew numbers 
about him, and La Fleur among the rest, 
whilst the horses were getting ready : as I 
continued sitting in the post-chaise, I could 
see and hear over their heads. 

—He said he had come last from Spain, 
where he had been from the furthest bor- 
ders of Franconia; and had got so far on 
his return home when his ass died. Every 
one seemed desirous to know what business 
could have taken so old and poor a man so 
tar a journey from his own home. 
2AI 



— It had pleased Heaven, he said, to blest 
him with three sons, the finest lads in all 
Germany; but having, in one week, lost 
two of the eldest of them by the small-pox, 
and the youngest falling ill of the same 
distemper, he was afraid of being bereft 
of them all ; and made a vow, if Heaven 
would not take him from him also, he would 
go, in gratitude, to St. Iago in Spain. 

When the mourner got thus far on his 
story, he stopp'd to pay Nature his tribute, 
— and wept bitterly. 

He said, Heaven had accepted the con- 
ditions, and that he had set out from his 
cottage with this poor creature, who had 
been a patient partner of his journey ; — that 
it had eat the same bread with him all the 
way, and was unto him as a friend. 

Every body who stood about, heard the 
poor fellow with concern. — La Fleur offered 
him money. — The mourner said he did not 
want it ; — it was not the value of the ass, 
but the loss of him. The ass, he said, he 
was assured, loved him; — and, upon this, 
told them a long story of mischance upon 
their passage over the Pyrenean Mountains, 
which had separated them from each other 
three days; during which time the ass had 
sought him as much as he had sought the 
ass ; and that they had scarce either eat or 
drunk till they met. 

— Thou hast one comfort, friend, said I, 
at least, in the loss of thy poor beast, — I'm 
sure thou hast been a merciful master to 
him. — Alas ! said the mourner, I thought 
so when he was alive; but now that he is 
dead, I think otherwise. — I fear the weight 
of myself and my afflictions together, have 
been too much for him, — they have short- 
ened the poor creature's days, and I fear I 
have them to answer for. — Shame on the 
world ! said I to myself. — Did we but love 
each other as this poor soul loved his ass,— - 
'twould be something. 



NAMPONT. 



THE POSTILION. 

The concern which the poor fellow & 
story threw me into, required some atten- 
tion : the postilion paid not the least to n, 
but set off upon the pave in a full galiuo. 
25 



290 SENTIMENT 

The thirstiest soul in the most sandy 
desert of Arabia could not have wished 
more for a cup of cold water than mine did 
for grave and quiet movements; and I 
should have had an high opinion of the 
postilion, had he but stolen off with me in 
something like a pensive pace. On the 
contrary, as the mourner finished his lam- 
entation, the fellow gave an unfeeling lash 
to each of his beasts, and set off clattering 
like a thousand Devils. 

I called to him as loud as I could, for 
Heaven's sake to go slower: — and the 
louder I called, the more unmercifully he 
galloped. — The deuce take him and his 
galloping too, said I, he'll go on tearing 
my nerves to pieces till he has worked me 
into a foolish passion, and then he'll go 
-slow, that I may enjoy the sweets of it. 

The postilion managed the point to a 
miracle : by the time he had got to the foot 
of a steep hill, about half a league from 
Nampont, — he had put me out of temper 
•with him, — and then with myself for be- 
ing so. 

My case then required a different treat- 
ment: and a good rattling gallop would 
■ have been of real service to me. 

— Then, prithee, get on, — get on, my 
:good lad, said I. 

— The postilion pointed to the hill. — I 
then tried to return back to the story of the 
poor German and his ass; — but I had broke 
the clue, and could no more get into it 
again than the postilion could into a trot. 

— The deuce go, said I, with it all ! Here 
-am I, sitting as candidly disposed to make 
the best of the worst as ever wight was, 
and all runs counter. 

There is one sweet lenitive at least for 
evils, which Nature holds out to us: so I 
took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep; 
and the first word which roused me was 
Amiens. 

— Bless me, said I, rubbing my eyes, — 
ill is is the very town where my pdor lady 
i* to Cuine. 



The words were scarce out of my mouth, 
when the Count de L***'s post-chaise with 
tut) sister in it, drove hastily by: she had 
just tirce to make me a bow of recogni- 



AL JOURNEY 

tion, — and of that particular kind of it 
which told me she had not yet done with 
me. She was as good as her look ; for, be- 
fore I quite finished my supper, her bro- 
ther's servant came into the room with a 
billet, in which she said she had taken the 
liberty to charge me with a letter, which 1 
was to present myself to Madame R*** the 
first morning I had nothing to do at Paris. 
There was only added, she was sorry, but 
from what penchant she had not considered, 
that she had been prevented telling me her 
story, — that she still owed it me; and if 
my route should ever lay through Brussels, 
and I had not by then forgot the name of 
Madame de L***,— that Madame de L*** 
would be glad to discharge her obligation. 

— Then I will meet thee, said I, fair 
spirit ! at Brussels ; — 'tis only returning 
from Italy, through Germany to Holland, 
by the route of Flanders, home; — 'twill 
scarce be ten posts out of my way: but 
were it ten thousand ! with what a moral 
delight will it crown my journey, in sharing 
in the sickening incidents of a tale of 
misery told to me by such a sufferer ! To 
see her weep, and, though I cannot dry up 
the fountain of her tears, what an exquisite 
sensation is there still left, in wiping them 
away from off the cheeks of the first and 
fairest of women, as I'm sitting With my 
handkerchief in rny hand in silence the 
whole n^ght beside her ! 

There was nothing wrong in the seiu 
ment; and yet I instantly reproached my 
heart with it in the bitterest and most rep- 
robate of expressions. 

It had ever, as I told the reader, been 
one of the singular blessings of my life, to 
be almost every hour of it miserably in 
love with some one: and my last flame 
happening to be blown out by a whiff of 
jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, I 
had lighted it up afresh at the pure taper 
of Eliza but about three months before, — 
swearing, as I did it, that it should last me 
through the whole journey. — Why should 
I dissemble the matter 1 I had sworn to her 
eternal fidelity; — she had a right to my 
whole heart : — to divide my affections was 
to lessen them, — to expose them, was to 
risk them ; where there is risk, there may 
be loss : — and what wilt thou have, Yorick, 
to answer to a heart so full of trust and 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 

confidence, — so good, so gentle, and un re- 
proaching ! 

— T will not go to Brussels, replied I, in- 
terrupting myself; — but my imagination 
went on, — I recalled her looks at that crisis 
of our separation, when neither of us had 
power to say adieu ! I look'd at the picture 
she had tied in a black riband about my 
neck, — and blush'd as t look'd at it. — I 
would have given the world to have kiss'd 
k — but was ashamed; — and shall this 
lender flower, said I, pressing it between 
toy hands, — shall it be smitten to its very 
root, — and smitten, Yorick ! by thee, who 
hast promised to shelter it in thy breast ? 

Eternal Fountain of Happiness ! said I, 
kneeling down upon the ground, — be thou 
my witness, — and every pure spirit which 
tastes it, be my witness also, that I would 
not travel to Brussels, unless Eliza went 
along with me, did the road lead me to- 
wards Heaven ! 

In transports of this kind, the heart, in 
spite of the understanding, will always say 
too much. 



201 



THE LETTER. 

AMIENS. 

Fortune had not smiled upon La Fleur; 
for he had been unsuccessful in his feats of 
chivalry, — and not one thing had offered to 
signalize his zeal for my service from the 
time he had entered into it, which was al- 
most four-and-twenty hours. The poor soul 
burn'd with impatience; and the Count de 

L 's servant coming with the letter, 

being the first practicable occasion which 
offered, La Fleur had laid hold of it, and, 
in order to do honor to his master, had 
taken him into a back-parlor in the aubera-e, 
and treated him with a cup or two of the 
best wine in Picardy ; and the Count de 

L 's servant, in return, and not to be 

behind-hand in politeness with La Fleur, 
had taken him back with him to the Count's 
hotel. La Fleur's prevenance/ (for there 
was a passport in his very looks) soon set 
every servant in the kitchen at ease with 
nim; and as a Frenchman, whatever be 
nis talents, has no sort of prudery in show- 
ing them, La Fleur, in less than five min- 
utes, had pulled out his file, and, leading 



off the dance himself wi'h the first note, 
set the jille de chambre, the maitre <V hotel, 
the cook, the scullion, and all the house- 
hold, dogs and cats, besides an old monkev, 
a-dancing ! I suppose there never was a 
merrier kitchen since the flood. 

Madame de L , in passing from her 

brother's apartments to her own, hearing 
so much jollity below stairs, rung up her 
Jille de chambre to ask about it ; and hear- 
ing it was the English gentleman's servant 
who had set the whole house merry with 
his pipe, she ordered him up. 

As the poor fellow could not present 
himself empty, he had loaden'd himself in 
going up stairs with a thousand compli- 
ments to Madame de L , in the part of 

his master, — added a long apocrypha of 

inquiries after Madame de L 's health, 

told her that Monsieur his master was au 
desespoire for her re-establishment from the 
fatigues of her journey, — and, to close all, 
that Monsieur had received the letter 
which Madame had done him the honor 
— And he has done me the honor, said 

Madame de L , interrupting La Fleur, 

to send a billet in return. 

Madame de L had said this with 

such a tone of reliance upon the fact, that 
La Fleur had not power to disappoint her 
expectations ; — he trembled for my honor, 
— and, possibly, might not altogether be 
unconcerned for his own, as a man capable 
of being attached to a master who could be 
wanting en egards vis a vis d'une femme ! 

so that, when Madame de L asked La 

Fleur if he had brought a letter, — OqiCoui 
said La Fleur ; so laying down his hat upon 
the ground, and taking hold of the flap of 
his right side-pocket with his left hand, he 
began to search for the letter with his 
right ; — then contrariwise. — Diable ! — 
then sought every pocket, pocket by pocket, 
round, not forgetting his fob ;—Peste ! — 
then La Fleur emptied them upon the 
floor, — pulled out a dirty cravat, — a hand- 
kerchief, — a comb, — a whip-lash, — a night- 
cap, — then gave a peep into his lat, — 
Quelle etourderie ! He had left the letter 
upon the table in the auberge ; — he would 
run for it, and be back with it in three 
minutes. 

I had just finished my supper when La 
Fleur came in to give me an account of Imh 



292 



adventure: he cold the whole story simply 
as it was ; and only added that if Monsieur 
had forgot (par hazard) to answer Mad- 
ame's letter, the arrangement gave him an 
opportunity to recover the faux pas; — and 
if not, that things were only as they were. 

Now, I was not altogether sure of my 
etiquette, whether I ought to have wrote or 
no; but if I had, — a Devil himself could 
not have been angry : 'twas but the officious 
zeal of a well-meaning creature for my 
honor ; and however he might have mistook 
the road, or embarrassed me in so doing, — 
his heart was in no fault, — I was under no 
necessity to write; — and, what weighed 
more than all, — he did not look as if he had 
done amiss. 

Tis all very well, La Fleur, said I. — 
'Twas sufficient. La Fleur flew out of the 
room like lightning, and return'd, with pen, 
ink, and paper, in his hand ; and coming up 
to the table, laid them close before me, with 
such a delight in his countenance, that I 
could not help taking up the pen. 

I began, and began again ; and though I 
had nothing to say, and that nothing might 
have been expressed in half a dozen lines, I 
made half a dozen different beginnings, and 
could no way please myself. 

In short, I was in no mood to write. 

La Fleur stepp'd out and brought a little 
water in a glass to dilute my ink, — then 
fetch'd sand and seal- wax. — It was all one ; 
I wrote, and blotted, and tore off, and burnt, 
and wrote again. — Le Diable Vemporte, 
said I half to myself, — I cannot write this 
self-same letter, throwing the pen down 
despairingly as I said it. 

As soon as I had cast down my pen, La 
Fleur advanced with the most respectful 
carriage up to the table, and making a thou- 
sand apologies for the liberty he was going 
to take, told me he had a letter in his pock- 
et, wrote by a drummer in his regiment to 
a corporal's wife, which, he durst say, would 
suit the occasion. 

I had a mind to let the poor fellow have 
fus humor. — Then prithee, said I, let me 
see it. 

La Fleur instantly pulled out a little 
dirty pocket-book, cramm'd full of small let- 
ters and billet-doux in a sad condition, and 
laying it upon the table, and then untying 
me string which held them all altogether, 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

ran them over, one by one, till he came to the 
letter in question, — La voila, said he, clap- 
ping his hands ; so unfolding it first, he laid 
it before me, and retired three steps from 
the table whilst I read it. 



THE LETTER. 



Madame, 

Je suis penetre de >adouleur la plus vive, 
et reduit en meme temps au desespoir par 
ce retour imprevu du Corporal, qui rend 
notre entrevue de ce soir la chose du monde 
la plus impossible. 

Mais vive la joie ! et toute la mienne sera 
de penser a vous. 

L'amour n'est Hen sans sentiment. 
Et le sentiment est encore moins sans 
amour. 

Onditqu'on ne doit jamais se desesperer, 
On dit aussi que Monsieur le Corporal 
monte le garde Mercredi : alors ce sera mon 
tour. 

Chacun a son tour. 
En attendant, — vive l'amour! et vive la 
bagatelle ! 

Je suis, Madame, 

Avec toutes les sentiments 
les plus respectueux et les 

tendres, tout a vous, 
Jaques Roque 

It was but changing the Corporal into the 
Count — and saying nothing about mounting 
guard on Wednesday, — and the letter was 
neither right nor wrong; — so to gratify the 
poor fellow, who stood trembling for my 
honor, his own, and the honor of his letter, 
— I took the cream gently off it, — and whip- 
ping it up in my own way, — seal'd it up, 

and sent it to Madame de L ; and the 

next morning we pursued our journey to 
Paris. 



PARIS. 



When a man can contest the point by 
dint of equipage, and carry on all flounder- 
ing before him with half a dozen lackeys and 
a couple of cooks, — 'tis very well in such a 
place as Paris, — he may drive in at which 
end of a street he will. 



A poor prince, who is weak in cavalry, 
«nd whose whole infantry does not exceed 
a single man, had best quit the field, and 
signalize himself in the cabinet, if he can 
get up into it, — I say up into it, — for there 
is no descending perpendicularly amongst 
'em with a " Me void, mes enfans" — here 
I am, — whatever many may think. 

I own, my first sensations, as soon as I 
was left solitary and alone in my own 
chamber in the hotel, were far from being 
so flattering as I had prefigured them. I 
walked up gravely to the window in my 
dusty black coat, and looking through the 
glass, saw all the world in yellow, blue, and 
green, running at the ring of pleasure. — 
The old with broken lances, and in helmets 
which had lost their visors , — the young, 
in armor bright, which shone like gold, be- 
flumed with each gay feather of the east, — 
ill — all — tilting at it like fascinated knights 
n tournaments of yore for fame and love. 

— Alas, poor Yorick ! cried I, what art 
,hou doing here ? On the very first onset ot 
ill this glittering clatter, thou art reduced 
jo an atom; — seek, — seek some winding 
alley, with a tourniquet at the end of it, 
where chariot never rolled, nor flambeau 
shot its rays ; — there thou mayest solace thy 
soul in converse sweet with some kind 
grisette of a barber's wife, and get into such 
coteries ! — 

— May I perish ! if I do, said I, pul ling- 
out a letter which I had to present to Ma- 
dame de R***. — I'll wait upon this lady 
ihe very first thing I do. So I called La 



Fleur to go seek me a barber directly, 
come back and brush my coat. 



THE WIG. 



PARIS. 



When the barber came, he absolutely re- 
ased to have any thing to do with my wig : 
'twas jither above or below his art : I had 
nothing to do but to take one ready-made 
r3i* his own recommendation. 

— But I fear, triend, said I, this buckle 
won't stand. — You may immerge it, replied 
he, into the ocean, and it will stand. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 29ft 

in this city ! thought I. — The utmost stretch 
of an English periwig-maker's ideas could 
have gone no further than to have "dipped 
" it into a pail of water." — What difference ! 
'tis like time to eternity ! 

I confess I do hate all cold conceptions as 
I do the puny ideas which engender them ; 
and am generally so struck with the great 
works of Nature, that, for my own part, if I 
could help it, I never would make a com- 
parison less than a mountain at least. All 
that can be said against the French sublime 
in this instance of it, is this : — that the gran- 
deur is more in the word, and less in the 
thing. No doubt the ocean fills the mind 
with vast ideas ; hut Paris being so far inland, 
it was not likely I should run post a hun- 
dred miles out of it to try the experiment: 
— the Parisian barber meant nothing. 

The pail of water standing beside the 
great deep, makes certainly but a sorry fig- 
ure in speech ; — but 'twill be said, — it has 
one advantage — 'tis in the next room, and 
♦he truth of the buckle may be tried in it, 
without more ado, in a single moment. 

In honest truth, and upon a more candid 
revision of the matter, the French expres- 
sion professes more than it performs. 

I think I can see the precise and distin- 
guishing marks of national characters more 
in these nonsensical minutice, than in the 
most important matters of state; where great 
men of all nations talk and talk so much 
alike, that I would not give ninepence to 
choose among them. 

I was so long in getting from under nij 
barber's hands, that it was too late to think 

of going with my letter to Madame R 

that night : but, when a man is once dressed 
at all points for going out, his reflections 
turn to little account; so taking down the 
name of the Hotel de Modene, where 1 
lodged, I walked forth, without any deter- 
mination where to go ; I shall consider ox 
that, said I, as I walk along. 



-and 



THE PULSE. 



Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of Jjfe, 
What a great scale is every thing upon j for smooth do you make the road of it ! iik« 



-.v 



294 

grace an( beauty, which beget inclinations 
to love at iirst sight : 'tis ye who open this 
door, and lei the stranger in. 

— Pray, Madame, said I, have the good- 
ness to tell me which way I must turn to 
go to the Opera Comique. — Most willingly, 
Monsieur, said she, laying aside her work. 

I had given a cast with my eye into half 
a dozen shops as I came along, in search of 
a face not likely to be disordered by such 
an interruption ; till, at last, this hitting my 
fancy, I had walked in. 

She was working a pair of ruffles as she 
gat in a low chair on the far side of the 
shop facing the door. 

— Tres volontiers ; most willingly, said 
she, laying her work down upon a chair next 
her, and rising up from the low chair she 
was sitting in, with so cheerful a movement 
and so cheerful a look, that, had I been lay- 
ing out fifty, Louis d'ors with her, I should 
have said — " This woman is grateful." 

You must turn, Monsieur, said she, going 
with me to the door of the shop, and point- 
ing the way down the street I was to take, 
— you must turn first to your left hand, — 
mais prenez garde, — there are two turns ; 
and be so good as to take the second, — then 
go down a little way, and you'll see a church, 
and when you are past it, give yourself the 
trouble to turn directly to the right, and 
that will lead you to the foot of the Pont 
Neuf, which you must cross, and there any 
one will do himself the pleasure to show 
you. 

She repeated her instructions three times 
over to me, with the same good-natur'd pa- 
tience the third time as the first ; — and if 
tones and manners have a meaning, which 
certainly they have, unless to hearts which 
shut them out, — she seemed really inter 
ested that I should not lose myself. 

I will not suppose it was the woman's 
beauty, notwithstanding she was the hand 
somest grisette, I think, I ever saw, which 
had much to do v : th the sense I had of her 
courtesy , omy I remember, when I told her 
how muchj was obliged to her, tnat I looked 
very full in her eyes, — and that I repeated 
my thanks as often as she had done her in- 
structions. 

I had not got ten paces from the door, be- 
fore I found I had forgot every tittle of what 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

her still standing in the door of the shop, as 
if to look whether I went right or not, — I 
returned back, to ask her whether the first 
turn was to my right or left, for that I had 
absolutely forgot. — Is it possible ! said she, 
half laughing. — 'Tis very possible, replied 
I, when a man is thinking more of a woman 
than of her good advice. 

As this was the real truth, she took it, as 
every woman takes a matter of right, with 
a slight curtsey. 

— Attendez, said she, laying her hand 
upon my arm to detain me, whilst she called 
a lad out of the back-shop to get ready a 
parcel of gloves. I am just going to send 
him, said she, w T ith a packet into that quar' 
ter ; and if you will have the complaisance 
to step in, it will be ready in a moment, and 
he shall attend you to the place. So I walked 
in with her to the far side of the shop ; and 
taking up the ruffle in my hands which she 
laid upon the chair, as if I had a mind to sit, 
she sat down herself in her low chair, and 
I instantly sat myself down beside her. 

He will be ready, Monsieur, said she, in 
a moment. — And in that moment, replied I, 
most willingly w 7 ould I say something very 
civil to you for all these courtesies. Any 
one may do a casual act of good-nature, but 
a continuation of them shows it is a part of 
the temperature ; and, certainly, added I, 
if it is the same blood which comes from the 
heart, which descends to the extremes 
(touching her wrist) I am sure you must 
have one of the best pulses of any woman 
in the world. — Feel it, said she, holding out 
her arm. So laying down my hat, I took 
hold of her fingers in one hand, and applied 
the two fore-fingers of my other to the ar- 
tery. — 

Would to Heaven ! my dear Eugenius, 
thou hadst passed by, and beheld me sitting 
in my black coat, and in my lack-a-day-sical 
manner, counting the throbs of it, one by 
one, with as much true devotion as if I had 
been watching the critical ebb or flow of 
her fever! How wouldst thou have kughed 
and moralized upon my new profession ! — 
and thou shouldst have laughed and moral- 
ized on. — Trust me, my dear Eugenius, 1 
should have said " there are worse occupa- 
" tions in this world than feeling a woman's 
" pulse.' 1 '' — But a grisette'' s! thou wouldst 
«lie had said :- so looking back, and seeing' have said, — and in an open shop, Yorick !— 




Q>\X»V*^ 



THE WIDOW. 
" I am sure you must have one of the best pulses of any woman in the world." - p. 294. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 295 

So much the better: for when my i Monsieur le Marl i is little belter than the 

views are direct, Eugenius, I ,:are not if all I stone under your foot'. 



the world saw me feel it. 



THE HUSBAND. 



I had counted twenty pulsations, and 
was going on fast towards the fortieth, 
when her husband coming unexpected from 
a back-parlor into the shop, put me a little 
out in my reckoning. — 'Twas nobody but 
her husband, she said — so I began a fresh 
score. — Monsieur is so good, quoth she, as 
he passed by us, as to give himself the 
double of feeling my pulse. — The husband 
cook off his hat, and making me a bow, 
said, I did him too much honor ; and having 
said that, he put on his hat and walked out. 

Good God ! said T to myself, as he went 
out, — and can this man be the husband of 
tn is woman ! 

Let it not torment the few who know 
what must have been the grounds of this 
exclamation, if I explain it to those who do 
not. 

In London, a shopkeeper and a shop- 
keeper's wife seem to be one bone and one 
flesh. In the several endowments of mind 
and body, sometimes the one, sometimes 
the other, has it, so as in general to be upon 
a par, and to tally with each other as near- 
ly as a man and wife need to do. 

In Paris, there are scarce two orders of 
beings more different; for the legislative 
and executive powers of the shop not rest- 
ing in the husband, he seldom comes there : 
— in some dark and dismal room behind, he 
sits commerceless in his thrum night-cap, 
the same rough son of Nature that Nature 
left him. 

The genius of a people where nothing 
but the monarchy is salique, having ceded 
this department, with sundry others, totally 
to the women — by a continual higgling 
with customers of all ranks and sizes from 
morning to night, like so many rough peb- 
bles shook long together in a bag, by ami- 



Surely, — surely, man ! it is not good 
for thee to sit alone ; thou wast made for 
social intercourse and gentle greetings; 
and this improvement of our natures from 
it, I appeal to, as my evidence. 

— And how does it beat, Monsieur 1 said 
she. — With all the benignity, said I, look- 
ing quietly in her eyes, that I expected. — 
She was going to say something civil in 
return, but the lad came into the shop with 
the gloves. — Apropos, said I, I want a cou- 
ple of pairs myself. 



THE GLOVES. 

PARIS. 

The beautiful grisette rose up when I 
said this, and, going behind the counter, 
reached down a parcel, and untied it : I 
advanced to the side over-against her : but 
they were all too large. The beautiful 
grisette measured them one by one across 
my hand. — It would not alter the dimen- 
sions. — She begged I would try a single 
pair, which seemed to be the least. — She 
held it open ; — my hand slipped into it a* 
once. — It will not do, said I, shaking my 
head a little. — No, said she, doing the same 
thing. 

There are certain combined looks of simple 
subtlety, — where whim, and sense, anG 
seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended, 
that all the languages of Babel set loose 
together, could not express them : — they 
are communicated and caught so instanta- 
neously, that you can scarce say which party 
is the infector. Heave it to your men of words 
to swell pages about it, — it is enough in the 
present to say again, the gloves would not 
do; so folding our hands within our arms, 
we both lolTd upon the counter; — it was 
narrow, and there was just room for the 
parcel to lay between us. 

The beautiful grisette looked sometimes 
at the gloves, then sideways to the window, 
then at the gloves, — and then at me. T was 



cable collisions, they have worn down their j not disposed to break silence; — I followed 



asperities and sharp angles, and not only 
become round and smooth, but will receive, 
some of them, a polish like a brilliant — 



her example : so I looked at the gloves, 
then to the window, then at the gloves, and 
then at her — and so on alternatelv. 



296 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



I found I lost considerably in every at- 
tack : — she had a quick black eye, and shot 
through two such long and silken eye-lashes 
with such penetration, that she looked into 
my very heart and reins. — It may seem 
strange ; but I could actually feel she did. 

It is no matter, said I, taking up a couple 
of the pairs next me, and putting them 
into my pocket. 

I was sensible the beautiful grisette had 
not asked a single livre above the price. I 
wished she had asked a livre more; and 
was puzzling my brains how to bring the 
matter about. — Do you think, my dear Sir, 
said she, mistaking my embarrassment, that 
I could ask a sous too much of a stranger 
— and of a stranger whose politeness, more 
than his want of gloves, has done me the 
honor to lay himself at my mercy ! — ftVen 
croyez capable ? — Faith ! not I, said I ; and 
if you were, you are welcome. So counting 
the money into her hand, and with a lower 
bow than one generally makes to a shop- 
keeper's wife, I went out ; and her lad with 
his parcel followed me. 



THE TRANSLATION. 

PARIS. 

There was nobody in the box I was let 
into, but a kindly old French officer. I love 
the character, not only because I honor the 
man whose manners are softened by a pro- 
fession which makes bad men worse, but 
that I once knew one, — for he is no more, 
— and why should I not rescue one page 
from violation by writing his name in it, 
and telling the world it was Captain Tobias 
Shandy, the dearest of my flock and friends, 
whose philanthropy I never think of at this 
long distance from his death, but my eyes 
gush out with tears. For his sake, I have a 
predilection for the whole corps of veterans ; 
and so I strode over the two back rows of 
benches, and placed myself beside him. 

The old officer was reading attentively 
& small pamphlet (it might be the book of 
the opera) with a large pair of spectacles. 
As soon as I sat down, he took his spec- 
tacles off, anu putting them into a shagreen 
case, returned them and the booK into his 
pocket together. I half rose up, and made 
h»m a dovv 



Translate this into any civilized language 
in the world, the sense is this : — 

" Here's a poor stranger come into the 
" box ; he seems as if he knew nobody ; and 
" is never likely, was he to be seven years 
" in Paris, if every man he comes near 
" keeps his spectacles upon his nose : — 'tis 
"shutting the door of conversation abso- 
lutely in his face, and using him worse 
" than a German." 

The French officer might as well have 
said it all aloud : and if he had, I should in 
course have put the bow I made him into 
French too, and told him, " I was sensible 
" of his attention, and returned him a thou- 
" sand thanks for it." 

There is not a secret so aiding to the 
progress of sociality, as to get master of 
this short-hand, and to be quick in render- 
ing the several turns of looks and limbs, 
with all their inflections and delineations, 
into plain words. For my own part, by long 
habitude, I do it so mechanically, that when 
I walk the streets of London, I go trans- 
lating all the way; and have more than 
once stood behind the circle, where not 
three words have been said, and have 
brought off twenty different dialogues with 
me, which I could have fairly wrote down 
and sworn to. 

I was going one evening to Martini's 
concert at Milan, and was just entering the 
door of the hall, when the Marquisina de 
F*** was coming out, in a sort of a hurry : 
— she was almost upon me before I saw her : 
so I gave a spring to one side to let her 
pass. She had done the same, and on the 
same side too : so we ran our heads together : 
she instantly got to the other side to get 
out; I was just as unfortunate as she had 
been ; for I had sprung to that side, and 
opposed her passage again. We both flew 
together to the other side, and then back, 
— and so on : — it was ridiculous ; we both 
blushed intolerably; so I did at last the 
thing I should have done at first ; — I stood 
stock still, and the Marquisina had no more 
difficulty. I had no power to go into the 
room till I had made her so much reparation 
as to wait and follow her with my eye to the 
end of the passage. She looked bock twice, 
and walked along it rather sideways, as if 
she would make room for any one coming 
j up stairs to pass her. — No, said 1, that's a 



vile translation : the Marquisina has a right 
to the best apology I can make her ; and 
that opening is left for me to do it in : — so 
I ran and begged pardon for the embarrass- 
ment I had given her, saying it was my 
intention to have made her way. She an- 
swered she was guided by the same inten- 
sion towards me ; — so we reciprocally 
thanked each other. She was at the top of 
the stairs ; and seeing no cicisbeo near her, 
( begged to hand her to her coach ; so we 
went down the stairs, stopping at every 
«hird step to talk of the concert and the ad- 
venture. — Upon my word, Madam, said I, 
when I had handed her in, I made six differ- 
ent efforts to let you go out. — And I made 
six efforts, replied she, to let you enter. — I 
wish to Heaven you would make a seventh, 
«aid I. — With all my heart, said she, making 
room. — Life is too short to be long about 
the forms of it ; — so I instantly stepped in, 
end she carried me home with her. — And 
♦vhat became of the concert 1 St. Cecilia, 
who, I suppose, was at it, knows more than I. 
I will only add, that the connexion which 
arose out of the translation, gave me more 
pleasure than any one I had the honor to 
make in Italy. 



THE DWARF. 



PARIS. 

I had never heard the remark made by 
any one in my life, except by one ; and who 
that was, will probably come out in this 
chapter; so that being pretty much unpre- 
possessed, there must have been grounds 
for what struck me the moment I cast my 
eye over the parterre, — and that was, the 
unaccountable sport of Nature in forming 
such numbers of dwarfs. — No doubt, she 
sports at certain times in almost every 
corner of the world ; but in Paris, there is 
no end to her amusements. — The Goddess 
seems almost as merry as she is wise. 

As I carried my idea out of the Opera 
Comique with me, I measured every body 
T saw walking in the streets by it. — Melan- 
choly applicati >n! especially where the size 
was extremely little, — the face extremely 
dark, — the eyes quick, —the nose long, — 
the teeth white, — the jaw prominent, — to 
2N 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 297 

see so many miserables, by force of acci- 
dents, driven out of their own proper class 
into the very verge of another, which it 
gives me pain to write down : — every third 
man a pigmy! — some by rickety heads 
and hump-backs ; — others by bandy-legs ; — 
a third set arrested by the hand of Nature 
in the sixth and seventh years of their 
growth; — a fourth, in their perfect and 
natural state, like dwarf apple-tr<*es ; from 
the first rudiments and stamina of their 
existence, never meant to grow higher. 

A Medical Traveller might say, 'tis 
owing to undue bandages; — a Splenetic 
one, to want of air; — and an Inquisitive 
Travellei tv fortify the system, may meas- 
ure the hi. ght of their houses, — the nar- 
rowness of their streets, and in how few 
feet square in the sixth and seventh stories 
such numbers of the Bourgeoisie eat and 
sleep together. But I remember, Mr. Shandy 
the Elder, who accounted for nothing like 
any body else, in speaking one evening of 
these matters, averred, That children, like 
other animals, might be increased almost 
to any size, provided they came right into 
the world; but the misery was, the citizens 
of Paris were so coop'd up, that they had 
not actually room enough to get them. — I 
do not call it getting any thing said he; — 
'tis getting nothing. — Nay, continued he, 
rising in his argument, 'tis getting worse 
than nothing, when all you have got, after 
twenty or twenty-five years of the tenderest 
care and most nutritious aliment bestowed 
upon it, shall not at last be as high as my 
leg. Now Mr. Shandy being very short, 
there could be nothing more said of it. 

As this is not a work of reasoning, I leave 
the solution as I found it, and content my- 
self with the truth only of the remark, which 
is verified in every lane and by-lane of 
Paris. I was walking down that which 
leads from the Carousal to the Palais Royal, 
and observing a little boy in some distress 
at the side of the gutter which ran down 
the middle of it, I took hold of his hand and 
help'd him over. Upon turning up his face 
to look at him after, I perceived he was 
about forty. — Never mind, said I, some 
good body will do as much for me when I 
am ninety. 

I feel some little principles within mo, 
which incline me to be merciful towards 



298 



this poor blighted part of my species, who 
have neither size nor strength to get on in 
the world. — I cannot bear to see one of 
Ihem trod upon; and had scarce got seated 
behind my old French officer ere the dis- 
gust was exercised, by seeing the very 
thing happen under the box we sat in. 

At the end of the orchestra, and betwixt 
that and the first side-box, there is a small 
esplanade left, where, when the house is 
fuL, numbers of all ranks take sanctuary. 
Though you stand, as in the parterre, you 
pay the same price as in the orchestra. A 
poor defenceless being of this order had got 
thrust, somehow or other, into this luckless 
place ; — the night was hot, and he was sur- 
rounded by beings two feet and a half 
higher than himself. The dwarf suffered 
inexpressibly on all sides ; but the thing 
which incommoded him most, was a tall, 
corpulent German, near seven feet high, 
who stood directly betwixt him and all pos- 
sibility of his seeing either the stage or the 
actors. The poor dwarf did all he could to 
o-et a peep at what was going forwards, by 
seeking for some little opening betwixt the 
German's arm and his body, trying first on 
one side, then on the other; but the Ger- 
man stood square in the most unaccommo- 
dating posture that can be imagined : — the 
dwarf might as well have been placed at 
the bottom of the deepest draw-well in 
Paris ; so he civilly reach'd up his hand to 
the German's sleeve, and told him his dis- 
tress. — The German turn'd his head back, 
look'd down upon him as Goliah did upon 
David, — and unfeelingly resumed his pos- 
ture. 

I was just then taking a pinch of snuff 
out of my monk's little horn-box. — And how 
would thy meek and courteous spirit, my 
dear monk! so temper'd to bear and for- 
bear ! — how sweetly would it have lent an 
ear to this poor soul's complaint. 

The old French officer seeing me lift up 
my eyes with an emotion, as I made the 
apostrophe, took the liberty to ask me what 
was the matter? — I told him the story in 
three words, and added, how inhuman it 
was. 

By this time the dwarf was driven to ex- 
tremes, and in his first transports, which 
are generally unreasonable, had told the 
German he would cut off his long queue 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

with his knife. — The German look'd back 
coolly, and told him he was welcome, if he 
could reach it. 

An injury sharpened by an insult, be it 
to whom it will, makes every man of senti- 
ment a party: I could have leap'd out of 
the box to have redressed it. — The old 
French officer did it with much less confu- 
sion ; for leaning a little over, and nodding 
to a sentinel, and pointing at the same time 
with his finger at the distress, — the sentinel 
made his way to it. — There was no occasion 
to tell t>he grievance — the thing told itself; 
so thrusting back the German instantly 
with his musket, — he took the poor dwarf 
by the hand, and placed him before him. — 
This is noble ! said I, clapping my hands 
together. — And yet you would not permit 
this, said the old officer, in England. 

— In England, dear Sir, said I, we sit all 
at our ease. 

The old French officer would have set 
me at unity with myself, in case I had been 
at variance, — by saying it was a bon mot ; 
— and as a bon mot is always worth some- 
thing in Paris, he offered me a pinch of 
snuff. 



THE ROSE. 

PARIS. 

It was now my turn to ask the old French 
officer, " What was the matter ?" for a cry 
of " Haussez les mains, Monsieur VAbbe" 
re-echoed from a dozen different parts of the 
parterre, was as unintelligible to me as my 
apostrophe to the monk had been to him. 

He told me it was some poor Abbe in one 
of the upper loges, who he supposed had got 
planted perdu behind a couple of grisettes, 
in order to see the opera, and that the par- 
terre espying him, were insisting upon his 
holding up both his hands during the repre- 
sentation. — And can it be supposed, said I, 
that an ecclesiastic would pick the grisettes 1 
pockets'? — The old French officer smiled, 
and whispering in my ear, opened a door 
of knowledge which I had no idea of. 

— Good God ! said I, turning pale with 
astonishment, is it possible, that a people so 
smit with sentiment should at the same 
time be so unclean, and so unlike them 
selves. — Quelle grossierte I added I. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



20P 



— The French officer told me it was an 
illiberal sarcasm at the church which had 
begun in the theatre about tae time the 
Tartuffe was given in it, by Moliere : — but, 
like other remains of Gothic manners, was 
declining-. — Every nation, continued he, 
have their refinements and grossiertes, in 
which they take the lead, and lose it of one 
another by turns; — that he had been in most 
aountries, but never in one where he found 
not some delicacies, which others seemed 
to want, he pour et le contre se trouvant 
sn chaque nation ; there is a balance, said 
he, ot good and bad everywhere ; and no- 
tuing but the knowing- it is so, can emanci- 
pate one half of the world from the prepos- 
session which it holds against the other: — 
that the advantage of travel, as it regarded 
the scavoir vivre, was by seeing a great 
deal both of men and manners ; it taught 
us mutual toleration ; and mutual toleration, 
concluded he, making me a bow, taught us 
mutual love. 

The old French officer delivered this 
with an air of such candor and good sense, 
as coincided w T ith my first favorable im- 
pressions of his character: — I thought I 
loved the man ; but I fear I mistook the 
object : — 'twas my own way of thinking, — 
the difference was, I could not have ex- 
Dressed it half so well. 



It is alike troublesome to both the ridor 
and his beast, — if the latter goes prickincr 
up his ears, and starting all the way at 
every object which he never saw before. — 
I have as little torment of this kind as any 
creature alive; and yet 1 honestly confess, 
that many a thing gave me pain, and that 
I blush'd at many a word the first month, 
— which I found inconsequent and per- 
fectly innocent the second. 

Madame de Rambouilet, after an ac- 
quaintance of about six weeks with her, 
had done me the honor to take me in her 
coach about two leagues out of town. — Ot 
all women, Madame de Rambouilet is the 
most correct ; — and I never wish to see one 
of more virtues and purity of heart. — In 
our return back, Madame de Rambouilet 
desired me to pull the cord. — I asked her 
if she wanted any thing 1 — Rien que pour 
pisser, said Madame de Rambouilet. 

Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Ma 
dame de Rambouilet p-ss on. — And ye 
fair mystic nymphs, go each one pluHc your 
rose, and scatter them in your path, — for 
Madame de Rambouilet did no more. — I 
handed Madame de Rambouilet out of the 
coach ; and had I been the priest of the 
chaste Castalia, I could not have served 
at her fountain with a more respectft;] de- 
corum. 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THROUGH 



iFrauce atrtr Xtalg* 



THE FILLE DE CHAMBRE. 

PARIS. 

WHAT the old French officer had deliv- 
ered upon travelling, bringing Polonius's 
advice to his son, upon the same subject, 
into my head, — and that bringing in Ham- 
let, — and Hamlet the rest of Shakspeare's 
Works, I stopt at the Quai de Conti, in my 
return home, to purchase the whole set. 

The bookseller said he had not a set in 
the world. — Comment 1 said I, taking one 
up out of a set which lay upon the counter 
betwixt us. — He said, they were sent him 
only to be got bound ; and were to be sent 
back to Versailles in the morning to the 
Count de B**** 

— And does the Count de B****, said I, 
read Shakspeare'? — Cest un Esprit fort, 
replied the bookseller. — He loves English 
books; and, what is more to his honor, 
Monsieur, he loves the English too. — You 
(speak this so civilly, said I, that it is enough 
to oblige an Englishman to lay out a Louis 
d'or or two at your shop. — The bookseller 
made a bow, and was going to say some- 
thing, when a young decent girl, about 
twenty, who by her air and dress seemed to 
be fille de chambre to some devout woman 
of fashion, came into the shop and asked 
for Les Egarements du Cceur <5f de V Es- 
prit. The bookseller gave her the book 
directly ; she pulled out a little green satin 
purse run round with a riband of the same 
color and putting her finger and thumb 
•nto it, she took out the money and paid 
for it. As I had nothing more to stay me 
in the shop, we both walk'd out of the door 
>ogether. 

— And what have you to do, ray dear, 
•aid I, with The Wanderings of the Heart, 



who scarce know yet you have one 7 nor 
till Love has first told you it, or some 
faithless shepherd has made it ache, canst 
thou ever be sure it is so. — Le Dieu m'en 
garde! said the girl. — With reason, said 
I ; for if it is a good one, 'tis a pity it 
should be stolen ; 'tis a little treasure to 
thee, and gives a better air to your face, 
than if it was dress'd out with pearls. 

The young girl listened with a submis- 
sive attention, holding her satin purse by 
its riband in her hand all the time. — 'Tis 
a very small one, said I, taking hold of the 
bottom of it — (she held it towards me) — 
and there is very little in it, my dear, said 
I ; but be but as good as thou art handsome, 
and Heaven will fill it. I had a parcel of 
crowns in my hand to pay for Shakspeare; 
and as she had let go the purse entirely, I 
put a single one in ; and tying up the rib- 
and in a bow-knot, returned it to her. 

The young girl made me more an humble 
curtsey than a low one ; — 'twas one of those 
quiet, thankful sinkings, where the spirit 
bows itself down, — the body does no more 
than tell it. I never gave a girl a crown 
in my life which gave me half the pleasure. 

My advice, my dear, would not have been 
worth a pin to you, said I, if I had not given 
this along with it : but now, when you see 
the crown, you'll remember it; — so don't 
my dear, lay it out in ribands. 

— Upon my word, Sir, said the girl, earn 
estly, I am incapable ; — in saying which, as 
is usual in little bargains of honor, she gave 
me her hand : En verite, Monsieur, je met- 
trai cet argent apart, said she. 

When a virtuous convention is made be- 
twixt man and woman, it sanctifies their 
most private walks; so notwithstanding it 
was dusky, yet as both our roads lay the 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



301 



same way, we made no scruple of walking 
along the Quai de Conti together. 

She made me a second curtsey in setting 
off; and before we got twenty yards from 
the door, as if she had not done enough be- 
fore, she made a sort of a little stop, to tell 
nie again — she thank'd me. 

— It was a small tribute, I told her, which 
I could not avoid paying to virtue, and 
would not be mistaken in the person I had 
been rendering it to for the world ; but I 
see innocence, my dear, in your face, — and 
foul befall the man who ever lays a snare 
in its way ! 

The girl seem'd affected, some way or 
other, with what I said ; — she gave a low 
sigh : — I found I was not empowered to in- 
quire at all after it, — so said nothing more 
till I got to the corner of the Rue de Nev- 
ers, where we were to part. 

— But is this the way, my dear, said I, to 
the Hotel de Modene? — She told me it was; 
— or that I might go by the Rue de Guene- 
gault, which was the next turn. — Then I'll 
go, my dear, by the Rue de Guenegault, 
said I, for two reasons: first, I shall please 
myself; and next, I shall give you the pro- 
tection of my company as far on your way 
as I can. — The girl was sensible I was civil, 
— and said, She wish'd the Hotel de Mo- 
dene was in the Rue de St. Pierre. — You 
live there ! said I. — She told me she was 
fille de chambre to Madame R**** Good 
God ! said I, 'tis the very lady for whom I 
have brought a letter from Amiens. — The 
girl told me that Madame R**** she be- 
lieved, expected a stranger with a letter, 
and was impatient to see him. — So I de- 
sired the girl to present my compliments to 
Madame R**** and say I would certainly 
wait upon her in the morning. 

We stood still at the corner of the Rue 
de Nevers whilst this pass'd. — We then 
stopped a moment whilst she disposed of her 
Egarements du Cceur, &c. more commodi- 
ously than carrying them in her hand : — 
they were two volumes ; — so I held the 
second for her whilst she put the first into 
her pocket ; and then she held her pocket, 
and I put in the other after it. 

'Tis sweet to feel by what fine-spun 
threads our affections are drawn together ! 

We set off afresh ; and as she took her 
third step, the girl put her hand within my 



arm. — I was just bidding her, — but she did 
it of herself, with that undeliberating sim 
plicity, which show'd it was out of her heaa 
that she had never seen me before. For 
my own part, I felt the conviction of con- 
sanguinity so strongly, that I could not help 
turning half round to look in her face, and 
see if I could trace out any thing in it of a 
family-likeness. — Tut! said I, are we not 
all relations? 

When we arrived at the turning up of 
the Rue de Guenegault, I stopp'd to bid her 
adieu for good and all ; the girl would thank 
me again for my company and kindness. — 
She bid me adieu twice ; — I repeated it aa 
often ; and so cordial was the parting be- 
tween us, that had it happened anywhere 
else, I'm not sure but I should have signed 
it with a kiss of charity, as warm and holy 
as an apostle. 

But in Paris, as none kiss each other but 
the men, — I did what amounted to the same 
thing, — 

I bid God bless her ! 



THE PASSPORT. 

PARIS. 

When I got home to my hotel, La Fleur 
told me 1 had been inquired after by the 
Lieutenant de Police. — The deuce take it, 
said I, — I know the reason. It is time the 
reader should know it ; for in the order of 
things in which it happened, it was omitteu; 
not that it was out of my head ; but, that 
had I told it then, it might have been forgot 
now; — and now is the time I want it. 

I had left London with so much precipi- 
tation, that it never entered my mind that 
we were at war with France; and had 
reached Dover, and looked through my 
glass at the hills beyond Boulogne, before 
the idea presented itself; and with this in 
its train, that there was no getting there 
without a passport. Go but to the end of a 
street, I have a mortal aversion for return 
ing back no wiser than I set out ; and as 
this was one of the greatest efforts I had 
ever made for knowledge, I could less bear 
the thoughts of it ; so hearing thp Count ue 
**** had hired the packet, I begg'd he wouid 
take me in his suite. The Count had somo 
little knowledge of me, so made little or re 
26 



302 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



difficulty, — only said, his inclination to serve 
me co'ild reach no farther than Calais, as 
he was to return by way of Brussels to 
Paris; however, when I had once pass'd 
there, I might get to Paris without inter- 
ruption ; but that in Paris I must make 
friends and shift for myself. — Let me get 
to Paris, Monsieur le Count, said I, — and I 
shall do very well. So I embarked, and 
never thought more of the matter. 

When La Fleur told me the Lieutenant 
de Police had been inquiring after me, — 
the thing instantly recurred ; — and by the 
time La Fleur had well told me, the master 
of the hotel came into my room to tell me 
the same thing, with this addition to it, that 
my passport had been particularly asked 
after: the master of the hotel concluded 
with saying he hoped I had one. — Not I, 
faith ! said I. 

The master of the hotel retired three 
steps from me, as from an infected person, 
as I declared this ; — and poor La Fleur ad- 
vanced three steps towards me, and with 
that sort of movement which a good soul 
makes to succor a distress'd one: the fel- 
low won my heart by it; and from that 
single trait, I knew his character as per- 
fectly, and could rely upon it as firmly, as 
if he had served me with fidelity for seven 
years. 

Mon Seigneur ! cried the master of the 
hotel : — but recollecting himself as he made 
the exclamation, he instantly changed the 
tone of it. — If Monsieur, said he, has not a 
passport (appar eminent) in all likelihood he 
has friends in Paris who can procure him 
one. — Not that I know of, quoth I, with an 
air of indifference. — Then certes, replied 
he, you'll be sent to the Bastile, or the 
Chatelet, au moins. — Poo ! said I, the King 
of France is a good-natured soul, — he'll 
hurt nobody. — Cela n'empeche pas, said 
he, — you will certainly be sent to the Bas- 
tile to-morrow morning. But I've taken 
your lodgings for a month, answered I, and 
1*11 not quit them a day before the time for 
all the Kings of France in the world. — La 
Fleur whispered in my ear, — That nobody 
could oppose the King of France. 

Pardi, said my host, ces Messieurs An- 
glais sont des gens tres extraordinaires ; 
-—and having both said and sworn it, — he 
went 01.1* 



THE PASSPORT. 

THE HOTEL AT PARIS. 

I could not find in my heart to torture 
La Fleur's with a serious look upon the 
subject of my embarrassment, which was 
the reason I had treated it so cavalierly ; 
and to show him how light it lay upon my 
mind, I dropped the subject entirely ; and 
whilst he waited upon me at supper, taik'd 
to him with more than usual gaiety about 
Paris, and of the Opera Comique. — La 
Fleur had been there himself, and had fol- 
lowed me through the streets as far as the 
bookseller's shop ; but seeing me come out 
with the young jille de chambre, and that 
we walk'd down the Quai de Conti to- 
gether, La Fleur deem'd it unnecessary to 
follow me a step further, — so making his 
own reflections upon it, he took a shorter 
cut, — and got to the hotel in time to be in- 
form'd of the affair of the police against 
my arrival. 

As soon as the honest creature had taken 
away, and gone down to sup himself, I then 
began to think a little seriously about my 
situation. 

— And here, I know, Engenius, thou wilt 
smile at the remembrance of a short dia- 
logue which pass'd betwixt us the moment 
I was going to set out : — I must tell it here. 

Engenius, knowing that I was as little 
subject to be overburthen'd with money as 
thought, had drawn me aside to interrogate 
me how much I had taken care for. Upon 
telling him the exact sum, Eugenius shook 
his head, and said, it would not do ; so 
pull'd out his purse, in order to empty it 
into mine. — I've enough, in conscience, 
Eugenius, said I. — Indeed, Yorick, you 
have not, replied Eugenius, — I know France 
and Italy better than you. — But you doi/ 4 
consider, Eugenius, said I, refusing his offer, 
that before I have been three days in Paris, 
I shall take care to say or do something or 
other for which I shall get clapp'd up into 
the Bastile, and that I shall live there a 
couple of months entirely at the King of 
France's expense. — I beg pardon, said Eu- 
genius, drily: really, I had forgot that re- 
source. 

Now the event I treated gaily, came se 
riously to my doer. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 303 



Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, 
or pertinacity : — or what is it in me, that 
after all, when La Fleur had gone down 
stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not 
6ring down my mind to think of it other- 
wise than I had then spoken of it to Eu- 
genius ! 

— And as for the Bastile, — the terror is 
in the word. — Make the most of it you can, 
said I to myself, the Bastile is but another 
word for a tower ; — and a tower is but 
another word for a house you can't get out 
of. — Mercy on the gouty ! for they are in it 
twice a year. — But with nine livres a day, 
and pen and ink and paper and patience, 
albeit a man can't get out, he may do very 
well within, — at least for a month or six 
weeks; at the end of which, if he is a 
harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and 
he comes out a better and wiser man than 
ne went in. 

I had some occasion, (I forget what) to 
step into the court-yard, as I settled this 
account; and remember I walked down 
stairs in no small triumph with the conceit 
of my reasoning. — Beshrew the sombre 
pencil ! said I, vauntingly, — for I envy not 
its power, which paints the evils of life 
with so hard and deadly a coloring. — The 
mind sits terrified at the objects she has 
magnified herself, and blackened: reduce 
them to their proper size and hue, she over- 
looks them. — 'Tis true, said I, correcting 
the proposition, — the Bastile is not an evil 
to be despised. — But strip it of its towers, 
— fill up the fosse, — unbarricade the doors, 
—call it simply a confinement, and suppose 
tis some tyrant of a distemper, — and not 
of a man, which holds you in it, — the evil 
vanishes, and you bear the other half with- 
out complaint. 

I was interrupted in the hey-day of this 
soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be 
of a child, which complained " it could not 
" get out." — I look'd up and down the pas- 
sage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor 
child, I went out without further attention. 

in my return back through the passage, 
I heard the same words repeated twice 
over; and looking up, I saw it was a star- 
ling hung in a little cage. — " I can't get 
" out, — 1 can't get out," said the starling. 



I stood looking at the bird : and to every 
person who came through the passage, it 
ran fluttering to the side towards which 
they approach'd it, with the same lamenta- 
tion of its captivity, — " I can't get out," 
said the starling. — God help thee ! said I, — 
but I'll let thee out, cost what it will ; so I 
turned about the cage to get the door: it 
was twisted and double twisted so fast with 
wire, there was no getting it open without 
pulling the cage to pieces. — I took both 
hands to it. 

The bird flew to the place where I was 
attempting his deliverance, and thrusting 
his head through the trellis, pressed his 
breast against it, as if impatient. — I fear, 
poor creature, said I, I cannot set thee at 
liberty. — "No," said the starling; "I can't 
" get out, — I can't get out," said the starling. 

I vow I never had my affections more 
tenderly awakened ; nor do I remember an 
incident in my life wi.ere the dissipated 
spirits to which my reason had been a bubble, 
were so suddenly call'd home. Mechanical 
as the notes were, yet so true in tune to 
nature were they chanted, that in one mo- 
ment they overthrew all my systematic 
reasonings upon the Bastile ; and I heavily 
walk'd up stairs, unsaying every word I had 
said in going down them. 

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, 
Slavery, said I, — still thou art a bitter 
draught ! and though thousands in all ages 
have been made to drink of thee, thou art 
no less bitter on that account. — 'Tis thou, 
thrice sweet and gracious goddess, address- 
ing myself to Liberty, whom all in public 
or in private worship, whose taste is grate- 
ful, and ever will be so, till Nature herself 
shall change. No tint of words can spot 
thy snowy mantle, or chymic power turn 
thy sceptre into iron ; — with thee to smile 
upon him as he eats his crust, the swain \s 
happier than his monarch, from whose court 
thou art exiled. — Gracious Heaven ! cried 
I, kneeling down upon the last step but one 
in my ascent, grant me but health, thou 
great Bestower of it, and give me but thw 
fair goddess as my companion, — and showci 
down thy mitres, if it seems good unro thy 
Divine Providence, upon those heaus which 
are aching for them. 



304 • SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

ready at the door cf the hotel by nine ia 
the morning. 

— I'll go directly, said I to myself. t« 
Monsieur le Due de Choiseul. 

The bird in his cage pursued me into my La Fleur would have put me to bed ; but 
room. I sat down close by my table, and, not willing he should see any thing upon 
leaning my head upon my hand, I began to my cheek which would cost the honest fel* 
figure to myself the miseries of confine- low a heart-ache, — I told him I would go t* 
ment. I was in a right frame for it, and so bed by myself, — and bid him go do the sam* 
I gave full scope to my imagination. 

I was going to begin with the millions 
of my fellow-creatures born to no inherit- 
ance but slavery: but finding, however 
affecting the picture was, that I could not 
bring it near me, and that the multitude of 
sad groups in it did but distract me, 

— I took a single captive; and having 
first shut him up in his dungeon, I then 
look'd through the twilight of his grated 
door to take his picture. 

I beheld his body half wasted away with 
long expectation and confinement, and felt 
what kind of sickness of the heart it was 
which arises from hope deferred. Upon 
looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish ; 
in thirty years the western breeze had not 
once fanned his blood ; — he had seen no sun 
no moon, in all that time ; — nor had the 
voice of friend or kinsman breathed through 
his lattice ! — His children ! — 

But here my heart began to bleed ; and 
I was forced to go on with another part of 
the portrait. 

He was sitting upon the ground upon a 
little straw, in the furthest corner of his 
dungeon, which was alternately his chair 
and bed : a little calendar of small sticks 
were laid at the head, notched all over with 
the dismal days and nights he had passed 
there : — he had one of these little sticks in 
his hand, and, with a rusty nail, he was 
etching another day of misery to add to the 
heap. As I darkened the little light he had, 
he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, 
then cast it down, — shook his head, and 
went on with his work of affliction. I heard 
his chains upon his legs, as he turned his 
boay to lay his little stick upon the bundle. 
—He gave a deep sigh. — I saw the iron 
enter into his soul ! — I burst into tears. I 
could not sustain the picture of confine- 
ment which my fancy had drawn. — I started 
•id from mv chair, and, calling La Fleur, — 



THE STARLING. 

ROAD TO VERSAILLES. 

I got into my remise the hour I proposed 
La Fleur got up behind, and I bid the 
coachman make the best of his way to Ver- 
sailles. 

As there was nothing in this road or 
rather nothing which I look for in travel- 
ling, I cannot fill up the blank better than 
with a short history of this self-same bird, 
which became the subject of the last chap- 
ter. 

Whilst the Honorable Mr. **** was wait- 
ing for a wind at Dover, it had been caught 
upon the cliffs, before it could well fly, by 
an English lad who was his groom ; who, 
not caring to destroy it, had taken it in his 
breast into the packet ; — and, by course ot 
feeding it, and taking it once under his pro- 
tection, in a day or two grew fond of it, 
and got it safe along with him to Paris. 

At Paris, the lad had laid out a livre in a 
little cage for the starling; and as he had 
little to do better the five months his master 
staid there, he taught it, in his mother's 
tongue, the four simple words — (and no 
more) — to which I owned myself so much 
its debtor. 

Upon his master's going on for Italy, the 
lad had given it to the master of the hotel. 
But his little song for liberty being in an 
unknown language at Paris, the bird had 
little or no store set by him ; — so La Fleur 
bought both him and his cage for me, for a 
bottle of Burgundy. 

In my return from Italy, I brought him 
with me to the country in whose language 
he had learned his notes; and telling the 
story of him to Lord A — , Lord A. begged 
the bird of me ; in a week Lord A. gave 
oid him bespeak me a remise, and have it i him to Lord B — ; Lord B. made a present 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



305 



of him to Lord C — ; and Lord C.'s gentle- 
niun sold him to Lord D.'s for a shilling- : — 
Lord D. gave him to Lord E. and so on, 
half round the alphabet. From that rank 
he passed into the lower house, and passed 
the hands of as many commoners. — But as 
all these wanted to get in, and my bird 
wanted to get out, he had almost as little 
store sot by him in London as in Paris. 

Tt is impossible but many of my readers 
must have heard of him ; and if any by 
mere chance have ever seen him, — 1 beg 
leave to inform them that that bird was my 
oird,— or some vile copy set up to represent 
aim. 

I have nothing farther to add upon him, 
but that from that time to this, I have borne 
this poor starling as the crest to my arms. 

And let the herald's officers twist his 
aeck, about if they dare. 



THE ADDRESS. 

VERSAILLES. 

* should not like to have my enemy take 
a view of my mind when I am going to ask 
protection of any man ; for which reason I 
generally endeavor to protect myself: but 

this going to Monsieur le Due de C , 

was an act of compulsion ; — had it been an 
act of choice, I should have done it, I sup- 
pose, like other people. 

How many mean plans of dirty address, 
as I went along, did my servile heart form! 
I - deserved the Bastile for every one of 
them. 

Then nothing would serve me, when I 
got within sight of Versailles, but putting 
words and sentences together, and conceiv- 
ing attitudes and tones to writhe myself 

into Monsieur le Due de C 's good grace. 

— This will do, said I. — Just as well, retort- 
ed I again, as a coat carried up to him by an 
adventurous taylor, without taking his mea- 
sure. — Fool ! continued I, — see Monsieur le 
Due's face first ; — observe what character 
is written in it; — take notice in what posture 
,- e stands to hear you : — mark the turns and 
expressions of his body and limbs; — and for 
the tone, — the first sound which comes from 
his lips will give you it ; and from all these 
together you'll compound an address at once 
upon the spot, which cannot disgust the 
2 



Duke ; — the ingredients are his own, and 
most likely to go down. 

Well ! said I, I wish it well over. — Cow 
ard again ! as if man to man was not equal 
throughout the whole surface of the globe ; 
and if in the field, why not face to face in 
the cabinet too ? and trust me, Yorick, when- 
ever it is not so, man is false to himself, and 
betrays his own succors ten times where 

nature does it once. Go to the Due de C ■ 

with the Bastile in thy looks; — my life for 
it, thou wilt be sent back to Paris in half 
an hour with an escort. 

I believe so, said I. — Then I'll go to the 
Duke, by Heaven ! with all the gaiety and 
debonnairness in the world. 

— And there you are wrong again, replied 
I. — A heart at ease, Yorick, flies into no 
extremes, — 'tis ever on its centre. — Well ! 
well ! cried I, as the coachman turned in at 
the gates, I find I shall do very well : and 
by the time he had wheeled round the court, 
and brought me up to the door, I found my- 
self so much the better for my own lecture, 
that I neither ascended the steps like a vic- 
tim to justice, who was to part with life 
upon the topmast, — nor did I mount them 
with a skip and a couple of strides, as I do 
when I fly up, Eliza ! to thee, to meet it. 

As I entered the door of the saloon, I was 
met by a person who possibly might be the 
maitre d'hotel, but had more the air of one 
of the under-secretaries, who told me the 
Due de C was busy. — I am utterly ig- 
norant, said I, of the forms of obtaining an 
audience, being an absolute stranger, and, 
what is worse in the present conjuncture of 
affairs, being an Englishman too. — He re- 
plied, that did not increase the difficulty. — 
[ made him a slight bow, and told him, I 
had something of importance to say to Mon- 
sieur le Due. The secretary looked towards 
the stairs, as if he was about to leave me to 
carry up this account to some one. — But I 
must not mislead you. said I, — for what I 
have to say is of no manner of importance 

to Monsieur le Due de C , but of great 

importance to myself. — Cest une autre af- 
faire, replied he. — Not at all, said I, to a man 
of gallantry. But pray, good Sir, continued I, 
when can a stranger hope to have acccsse?— 
In not less than two hours, said he, looking at 
his watch. — The number of equipages in 
the court-yard seemed to justify the calcu- 
26* 



306 SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

lalion, that I ( >uM have no nearer prospect ; ' Such a reverse m a man's life awaker t 
— and as walking backwards and forwards ! a better principle than curiosity : I could w* 



in the saloon, without a soul to commune 
with, was for the time as bad as being in 
the Castile itself, I instantly went back to 
mv remise, and bid the coachman drive me 
to the Cordon Bleu, which was the nearest 
hotel. 

I think there is a fatality in it ; — I seldom 
go to the place I set out for. 



LE PATISSER. 

VERSAILLES. 

Before I had got half-way down the 
street, I changed my mind : as I am at Ver- 
sailles, thought I, I might as well take a 
view of the town; so I pulled the cord, and 
ordered the coachman to drive round some 
of the principal streets. — I suppose the town 
is not very large, said I. — The coachman 
begged pardon for setting me right, and told 
me it was very superb; and that numbers 
of the first dukes and marquisses and counts 

nad hotels. — The Count de B , of whom 

the bookseller at the Quai de Conti had 
spoke so handsomely the night before, came 
instantly into my mind. And why should I 

not go, thought I, to the Count de B , who 

has so high an idea of English booKs and 
English men, — and tell him my story 1 — So 
I changed my mind a second time. In truth, 
it was the third ; for I had intended that day 

for Madame de R , in the Rue St. Pierre, 

and had devoutly sent her word by her Jille 
de chamhre that I would assuredly wait 
upon her; — but I am governed by circum- 
stances : — I cannot govern them : so seeing 
a man standing with a basket on the other 
side of the street, as if he had something to 
-sell, I bid La Fleur go up to him, and in- 
quire for the Count's hotel. 

La Fleur returned a little pale ; and told 
m* it was the Chevalier de St. Louis selling 
pates. — It is impossible, La Fleur, said I, — 
La Fleur could no more account for the 
phenomenon than myself; but persisted in 
his story; he had seen the croix set in gold, 
with its red riband, he said, tied to his 



help looking for some time at him as I sat 
in the remise. The more I looked at him, 
his croix and his basket, the stronger they 
wove themselves into my brain. — I ^ot out 
of the remise, and went towards him. 

He was begirt with a clean linen rpron, 
which fell below his knees, and with t sort 
of a bib that went half-way up to his oreast. 

Upon the top of this, but a little below 
the hem, hung his croix. His basket of 
little pates was covered over with a white 
damask napkin ; another of the same kind 
was spread at the bottom ; and there was 
such a look of proprete and nearness 
throughout, that one might have bought his 
pates of him as much from appetite as sen 
timent. 

He made an offer of them to neither; but 
stood still with them at the corner of a hotel, 
for those to buy who chose it, without soli 
citation. 

He was about forty-eight ; — of a sedate 
look, something approaching to gravity. I 
did not wonder. — I went up rather to the 
basket than him, and having lifted up the 
napkin, and taken one of his pates into my 
hand, — I begged he would explain the ap 
pearance which affected me. 

He told me in a few words, that the bes* 
part of his life had passed in the service; in 
which, after spending a small patrimony, 
he had obtained a company and the croix 
with it; but that, at the conclusion of the 
last peace, his regiment being reformed, pnd 
the whole corps, with those of some other 
regiments, left without any provision, he 
found himself in a wide world without 
friends, without a livre ; — and indeed, said 
he, without any thing but this : — (pointing, 
as he said it, to his croix.) — The poor Che- 
valier won my pity; and he finished the 
scene by winning my esteem too. 

The King, he said, was the most gene- 
rous of princes ; but his generosity could 
neither relieve nor reward every one ; and 
it was only his misfortune to be amongst 
the number. He had a little wife, he said, 
whom he loved, who did the patisserie ; and 
added, he felt no dishonor in defending her 



button-hole ; and had looked into the basket, 

*ind seen the pates which the Chevalier was I and himself from want in this way, — unless 

■eeHmg; so could not be mistaken in that. Providence had offered him a better. 






THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



so- 



ft would be wicked to withhold a pleasure 
from the good, in passing 1 over what hap- 
pened to this poor Chevalier of St. Louis 
about nine months after. 

It seems he usually took his stand near 
the iron gates which lead up to the palace ; 
and as his croix had caught the eye of num- 
bers, numbers had made the same inquiry 
which I had done. — He had told the same 
story, and always with so much modesty and 
good sense, that it had reached at last the 
King's ears; — who hearing the Chevalier 
had been a gallant officer, and respected by 
the whole regiment as a man of honor and 
integrity, — he broke up his little trade by a 
pension of fifteen hundred livres a-year. 

As I have told this to please the reader, I 
beg he will allow me to relate another, out 
of its order, to please myself; — the two sto- 
ries reflect light upon each other, — and 'tis 
a pity they should be parted. 



THE SWORD. 



When states and empires have their pe- 
riods of declension, and feel in their turns 
what distress and poverty is, — I stop not to 
tell the causes which gradually brought the 

house of d'E in Britanny into decay 

The Marquis d'E had fought up against 

his condition with great firmness ; wishing 
to preserve and still show to the world some 
little fragments of what his ancestors had 
been; their indiscretions had put it out of 
/lis power. There was enough left for the 
little exigencies of obscurity. — But he had 
two boys who looked up to him for light; — 



of an ancient law of the duchy, which, 
though seldom claimed, he said, was 10 less 
in force, he took his sword from his side; — 
Here, said he, take it ; and be trusty guar- 
dians of it till better times put me in condi- 
tion to reclaim it. 

The president ^accepted the Marquis's 
sword ; — he staid a few minutes to see it 
deposited in the archives of his house, and 
departed. 

The Marquis and his whole family em- 
barked the next day for Martin ico, and in 
about nineteen or twenty years of success- 
ful application to business, with some un- 
looked-for bequests from distant branches of 
his house, returned home to reclaim his no- 
bility, and to support it. 

It was an incident of good fortune which 
will never happen to any traveller but a 
sentimental one, that I should be at Rennes 
at the very time of this solemn requisition. 
I call it solemn ; — it was so to me. 

The Marquis entered the court with his 
whole family : he supported his lady ; — his 
eldest son supported his sister, and his 
youngest was at the other extreme of the 
lino next his mother ; — he put his handker- 
chief to his face twice. — 

There was a dead silence. When the 
Marquis had approached within six paces 
of the tribunal, he gave the Marchioness to 
his youngest son, and advancing three steps 
before his family, — he reclaimed his sword. 
His sword was 'given him: and the mce 
ment he got it into his hand, he drew it al- 
most out of the scabbard : — 'twas the sin- 
ning face of a friend he had once given up 
— he looked attentively along it, beginning 
at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the 



he thought they deserved it. He had tried J same, — when observing a little rust which 
his sword, — it could not open the way, — the J it had contracted near the point, he brought 
mounting was too expensive, — and simple 'it near his eye, and bending his head down 



economy was not a match for it : — there was 
no resource but commerce. 

In any other province in France save 
Britanny, this was smiting the root for ever 
of the little tree his pride and affection 
wished to see re-blossom. — But in Britanny, 
there being a provision for this, he availed 



over it, — I think I saw a tear fall upon the 
place: I could not be deceived by what fol 
lowed. 

" I shall find," said he, " some other way 
11 to get it off." 

When the Marquis had said this, he re- 
turned his sword into its scabbard, mado a 



nimself of it; and taking an occasion when j bow to the guardians of it, — and, with hi§ 
•.he States were assembled at Rennes, the wife and daughter, and his two sons follow 
Marquis, attended with his two boys, enter- ling him, walked out. 
ti the court; and having pleaded the right | O how I envied his feelings! 



305 SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

T1IF PASSPORT. 



VERSAILLES. 

I found no difficulty in getting- admittance 

to Monsieur le Count de B . The set of 

Shakspeare was laid upon the table, and he 
was tumbling them over.* I walked up close 
to the table, and giving first such a look at 
the books as to make him conceive I knew 
what they were, — I told him I had come 
without any one to present me, knowing I 
should meet with a friend in his apartment, 
who, I trusted, would do it for me; — it is 
my countryman the great Shakspeare, said 
I, pointing to his works, et ayez la bonte, 
mon cher ami, apostrophizing his spirit, 
added I, de me /aire cet honneur-ld. — 

The Count smiled at the singularity of 
the introduction; and seeing I looked a 
little pale and sickly, insisted upon my 
taking an arm-chair ; so I sat down ; and to 
save him conjectures upon a visit so out of 
all rule, I told him simply of the incident 
in the bookseller's shop, and how that had 
impelled me rather to go to him with the 
story of a little embarrassment I was under, 
than to any other man in France. — And 
what is your embarrassment] let me hear 
it, said the Count. — So I told him the story 
just as I have told it the reader. 

— And the master of my hotel, said I, as 
T concluded it, will needs have it, Mon- 
sieur le Count, that I should be sent to the 
Bastile ; — but I have no apprehensions, con- 
tinued I, — for in falling into the hands of 
the most polished people in the world, and 
being conscious I was a true man, and not 
come to spy the nakedness of the land, I 
scarce thought I lay at their mercy. — It 
does not suit the gallantry of the French, 
Monsieur le Count, said I, to show it against 
invalids. 

An animated blush came into the Count 

de B 's cheeks as I spoke this. — Ne 

craignez rien — Don't fear, said he. — In- 
deed I don't, replied I again. — Besides, 
continued I, a little sportingly, I have come 
laughing all the way from London to Paris; 
aud I do not think Monsieur le Due de 
Choiseul is such an enemy to mirth, as to 
send me back crying for my pains. 

— My application to you, Monsieur le 

Count de B (making him a low bow) 

4 tc desire he will not. 



The Count heard me with great good- 
nature, or I had not said halt as much, — 
and once or twice said, — Cest bien (lit. 
So I rested my cause there, — and deter- 
mined to say no more about it. 

The Count led the discourse : we talked 
of indifferent things, — of books, and politics, 
and men ; and then of women. — God bless 
them all ! said I, after much discourse about 
them, — there is not a man upon earth who 
loves them so much as I do. After all the 
foibles I have seen, and all the satires 1 
have read against them, still I love them ; 
being firmly persuaded that a man who has 
not a sort of an affection for the whole sex, 
is incapable of ever loving a single one as 
he ought. 

He bien ! Monsieur VAnglois, said the 
Count, gaily ; — you are not come to spy the 
nakedness of the land ; — I believe you ; — ni 
encore, I dare say, that of our women : but 
permit me to conjecture, — if, par hazard, 
they fell into your way, that the prospect 
would not affect you. 

I have something within me which can- 
not bear the shock of the least indecent in- 
sinuation ; in the sportability of chit-chat I 
have often endeavored to conquer it, and 
with infinite pain have hazarded a thousand 
things to a dozen of the sex together, — the 
least of which I could not venture to a sin- 
gle one to gain Heaven. 

Excuse me, Monsieur le Count, said I : — 
as for the nakedness of your land, if I saw 
it, I should cast my eyes over it with tears 
in them ; — and for that of your women 
(blushing at the idea he had excited in me) 
I am so evangelical in this, and have such 
a fellow-feeling for whatever is weak about 
them, that I would cover it with a garment, 
if I knew how to throw it on; — but I could 
wish, continued I, to spy the nakedness of 
their hearts, and through the different dis- 
guises of customs, climates, and religion, 
find out what is good in them to fashion my 
own by; — and therefore am I come. 

It is for this reason, Monsieur le Count, 
continued I, that I have not seen the Palais 
Royal, nor the Luxembourg, — nor the Fa- 
cade of the Louvre, — nor have attempted to 
swell the catalogues we have of pictures, 
statues, and churches. — I conceive every 
fair being as a temple, and would rather 
enter in, and see the original drawings and 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



300 



foose sketch ss hung- up in it, than the Trans- j — Good my I^ord ! said I ; but there arr> \\vo 

figuration 01 Raphael itself. I Yoricks. The Yorick your Lordship thinks 

The thirst of this, continued T, as impa-'of, has been dead and buried eight hundred 

tient as that which inflames the breast of 'years ago: he flourish'd in HorwendiPus'a 



the connoisseur, has led me from my own 
home into France, — and from France will 
lend me through Italy : — 'tis a quiet jour- 



court; — the other Yorick is myself, who 
have flourish'd, my Lord, in no court. — He 
shook his head. — Good God! said I, you 



noy of the heart in pursuit of Nature, and | might as well confound Alexander the Great 
those affections which arise out of her, 
which make us love each other, — and the 
world* better than we do. 

The Count said a great many civil things 
to me upon the occasion; and added, very 
politely, how much he stood obliged to 
JShakspeare for making me known to him. 
— But d-propos, said he; — Shakspeare is 
full of great things: — he forgot the small 
punctilio of announcing your name: — it 
puts you under a necessity of doing it your- 
self. 



THE PASSPORT. 



VERSAILLES. 



There is not a more perplexing affair in 
'ife to me, than to set about telling any one 
who I am, — for there is scarce any body I 
cannot give a better account of than myself; 
and I have often wish'd I could do it in a 
single word, — and have an end of it. It 
was the only time and occasion in my life I 
could accomplish this to any purpose ; — for 
Shnkspeare lying upon the table, and recol- 
lecting I was in his books, I took up Ham- 
let, and turning immediately to the grave- 
diggers' scene in the fifth act, I laid my 
finger upon Yorick ; and advancing the 
book to the Count, with my finger all the 
way over the name, — Me void ! said I. 

Now, whether the idea of poor Yorick's 
skull was put out of the Count's mind by 
the reality of my own, or by what magic he 
could drop a period of seven or eight hun- 
dred years, makes nothing in this account : 
't's certain, the French conceive better than 
they combine ; — I wonder at nothing in this 
world, and the less at this ; inasmuch as 
one of the first of our own church, for whose 
candor and paternal sentiments I have the 
'highest veneration, fell into the same mis- 
take in the very same case ; — " He could 
" not bear," he said, " to look into sermons 
u wrote by the King of Denmark's jester." 



with Alexander the Coppersmith, my Lord'. 
— 'Twas all one, he replied. 

— If Alexander King of Macedon, could 
have translated your Lordship, said I, I'm 
sure your Lordship would not have said so. 

The poor Count de B**** fell but into the 
same error. 

— Et, Monsieur, est il Yorick ? cried the 
Count. — Je le suis, said I. — Vous? — Moi — 
moi qui ai Vhonneur de vous purler, Mon- 
sieur le Comte. — Mon Dieu ! said he, em- 
bracing me, — Vous etes Yorick ! 

The Count instantly put the Shakspeare 
into his pocket, and left me alone in his 
room. 



THE PASSPORT. 



VERSAILLES. 



I could not conceive why the Count de 
B**** had gone so abruptly out of the room, 
any more than I could conceive why he had 
put the Shakspeare into his pocket. — Mys- 
teries which must explain, themselves, are 
not worth the loss of time which a conjecture 
about them takes up : 'twas better to read 
Shakspeare; so taking up "Much Ado about 
"Nothing," I transported myself instantly 
from the chair I sat in to Messina in Sicily. 
and got so busy with Don Pedro, and Bene- 
dict and Beatrice, that I thought not of Ver- 
sailles, the Count, or the passport. 

Sweet pliability of man's spirit, that can 
at once surrender itself to illusions which 
cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary 
moments ! — Long, — long since had ye num- 
ber'd out my clays, had I not trod so great 
a part of them upon this enchanted ground. 
When my way is too rough for my feet, or 
too steep for my strength, I get off it, to 
some smooth velvet path which fancy has 
scatter'd over with rose-buds of delights 
and, having taken a few turns in it, coin* 
back strengthen'd and refresh 'd. — Wh-r 
evils press sore uoon me, and there is nc 



310 SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

retreat from them in this world, then I take 
a new course ; — I leave it, — and, as I have 
a clearer idea of the Elysian Fields than I 
have of Heaven, I force myself, like iEneas, 
into them; — I see him meet the pensive 
shade of his forsaken Dido, and wish to 
recognize it ; — I see the injured spirit wave 
her head, and turn off silent from the author 
of her miseries and dishonors ; — I lose the 
feelings for myself in hers, and in those 
affections which were wont to make me 
mourn for her when I was at school. 

Surely, this is not walking in a vain 
shadow, — nor does man disquiet himself in 
vain by it: — he oftener does so in trusting 
the issue of his commotions to reason only. 
— I can safely say for myself, I was never 
able to conquer any one single bad sensa- 
tion in my heart so decisively, as by beat- 
ing up as fast as I could for some kindly 
and gentle sensation to fight it upon its own 
ground. 

When I had got to the end of the third 
act, the Count de B**** entered with my 
passport in his hand. Mons. le Due de 

C , said the Count, is as good a prophet, 

1 dare say, as he is a statesman. — Un homme 
qui rit, said the Duke, ne sera jamais dan- 
ger eux. — Had it been for any one but the 
King's jester, added the Count, I could not 
have got it these two hours. — Pardonnez 
moi, Mons. le Count, said I, I am not the 
King's jester. — But you are Yorick! — Yes. 
— Et vous plaisantez? — I answered, In- 
deed I did jest, — but was not paid for it ; — 
'twas entirely at my own expense. 

We have no jester at court, Mons. le 
Count, said I ; the last we had was in the 
licentious reign of Charles II. ; — since which 
time, our manners have been so gradually 
refining, that our court at present is so full 
of patriots, who wish for nothing but the 
honors and wealth of our country; — and 
our ladies are all so chaste, so spotless, so 
irood, so devout, — there is nothing for a 
jester to make a jest of. 

Voila un persiflage ! cried the Count. 



THE PASSPORT. 

VERSAILLES. 



As the passport was directed to all lieu- 
lonant-governors, governors, and command- 



ants of cities, generals of armies, justiciaries, 
and all officers of justice, to let Mr. Yorick 
the King's jester, and his baggage, travel 
quietly along, — I own the triumph o^ obtain- 
ing the passport was not a little Tarnish'd 
by the figure I cut in it. — But there is no- 
thing unmix'd in this world ; and some of 
the gravest of our divines have carried it 
so far as to affirm, that enjoyment itself was 
attended even with a sigh, and that the 
greatest they knew of terminated, in a 
general ivay, in little better than a convul- 
sion. 

I remember the grave and learned Bevo- 
riskius, in his Commentary upon the Gene- 
rations from Adam, very naturally breaks 
off in the middle of a note, to give an ac- 
count to the world of a couple of sparrows 
upon the out-edge of his window, which had 
incommoded him all the time he wrote; 
and, at last, had entirely taken him off from 
his genealogy. 

— 'Tis strange ! writes Bevoriskius, but 
the facts are certain ; for I have had the 
curiosity to mark them down, one by one, 
with my pen ; — but the cock-sparrow, during 
the little time that I could have finished 
the other half of this note, has actually 
interrupted me with the reiteration of his 
caresses three-and-twenty times and a half" 

How merciful, adds Bevoriskius, is Hea- 
ven to his creatures \ 

Ill-fated Yorick ! that the gravest of thy 
brethren should be able to write that to the 
world, which stains thy face with crimson 
to copy, even in thy study. 

But this is nothing to my travels ; — so I 
twice, — twice beg pardon for it. 



CHARACTER. 



VERSAILLES. 



And how do you find the French ) said 

the Count de B , after he had given me 

the passport. 



The reader may suppose, that, after so 
obliging a proof of courtesy, I could not be 
at a loss to say something handsome to the 
inquiry. 

Mais passe pour cela. — Speak frankly 
said he : do you find all the urbanity in the 
French which the world give us the honor 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



311 



of! — I had found every tiling, I said, which 
confirmed it. — Vraiment, said the Count, 
les Francois sont polls. — To an excess, re- 
plied I. 

The Count took notice of the word ex- 
cesse ; and would have it I meant more 
than I said. I defended myself a long time, 
as well as I could, against it ; — he insisted 
I had a reserve, and that I would speak my 
opinion frankly. 

I believe, Mons. le Count, said T, that 
man has a certain compass, as well as an 
instrument; and that the social and other 
calls have occasion, by turns, for every key 
in him ; so that, if you begin a note too 
high or too low, there must be a want either 
in the upper or under part, to fill up the 

system of harmony. — The Count de B 

did not understand music: so desired me to 
explain it some other way. — A polish'd na- 
tion, my dear Count, said I, makes every 
one its debtor; and besides, Urbanity itself, 
like the fair sex, has so many charms, it 
goes against the heart to say it can do ill ; 
and yet, I believe, there is but a certain 
line of perfection that man, take him alto- 
gether, is empower'd to arrive at; — if he 
£-ets beyond, he rather exchanges qualities 
than gets them. I must not presume to 
say how far this has affected the French 
in the subject we are speaking of; — but 
should it ever be the case of the English, 
in the progress of their refinements, to ar- 
rive at the same polish which distinguishes 
the French, if we did not lose the politesse 
du cozur, which inclines men more to hu- 
mane actions than courteous ones, — we 
should at least lose that distinct variety 
and originality of character, which distin- 
guishes them not only from each other, but 
from all the world besides. 

I had a few of King William's shillings, 
as smooth as glass, in my pocket, and fore- 
seeing they would be of use in the illustra- 
tion of my hypothesis, I had got them into 
my hand, when I had proceeded so far : — 

See, Mons. le Count, said I, rising up, 
and laying them before him upon the table, 
— by jingling and rubbing one against 
mother for seventy years together in one 
body's pocket or another's, they are become 
so much alike, you can scarce distinguish 
rne shilling from another. 

The English, like ancient medals, kept 



more apart, and passing but few people's 
hands, preserve the first sharpness which 
the fine hand of Nature has given them ;-- 
they are not so pleasant to feel, — but, in 
return, the legend is so visible, that, at the 
first look, you see whose image and super- 
scription they bear. But the French, Mons. 
le Count, added I, (wishing to soften what 
T had said), have so many excellencies, they 
can the better spare this ; — they are a loyal, 
a gallant, a generous, an ingenious, and a 
good-temper'd people as is under Heaven ; 
— if they have a fault, they are too serious. 

Mon Dieu! cried the Count, rising out 
of his chair. 

Mais vous plaisantez, said he, correcting 
his exclamation. — I laid my hand upon my 
breast, and, with earnest gravity, assured 
him it was my most settled opinion. 

— The Count said he was mortified, he 
could not stay to hear my reasons, being 
engaged to go that moment to dine with 
the Due de C . 

But, if it is not too far to come to Ver- 
sailles, to eat your soup with me, I beg, 
before you leave France, I may have the 
pleasure of knowing you retract yout 
opinion, — or in what manner you support 
it. — But if you do support it, Mons. A11- 
glois, said he, you must do it with all your 
powers, because you have the whole world 
against you. — I promised the Count I would 
do myself the honor of dining with him 
before I set out for Italy; — so took my 
leave. 



THE TEMPTATION. 



When I alighted at the hotel, the portor 
told me a young woman with a band-box 
had been that moment inquiring for me. — 
I do not know, said the porter, whether sue 
is gone away or not. — I took the key of my 
chamber of him, and went up stairs; and, 
when I had got within ten steps of the top 
of the landing before my door, I met hpr 
coming easily down. 

It was the fair fille de chambre I hmi 
walked along the Quai de Conti with : 
Madame de R**** had sent her upon som«» 
commission to a marchante des modet 



31? 



SEXTIMEXT. 



\v ith n a step or two of the bote] de Modene ; 
nnd, as I had fail'd in waiting- upon lier, had 
bid her inquire if I had left. Paris; and, if 
bo, whether I had not left a letter addressed • 
to her. 

As the fair Jille de chambre was so near 
my door, she returned back, and went into 
1he room with me for a moment or two 
whilst I wrote a card. 

It was a fine still evening- in the latter 
'end of the month of May, — the crimson 
window-curtains (which were of the same 
color as those of the bed) were drawn 
close, — the sun was setting-, and reflected i 
through them so warm a tint into the fair 
fdle de chambre* s face, — I thought she 
blush'd ; — the idea of it made me blush my- J 
self; — we were quite alone, and that super- 
induced a second blush before the first! 
could get off. 

There is a sort of a pleasing half-guilty ! 
blush, where the blood is more in fault than 
the man; — 'tis sent impetuous from thei 
heart, and virtue flies after it, — not to call 
it back, but to make the sensation of it 
more delicious to the nerves ; — 'tis asso- 
ciated. 

But I'll not describe it ; — I felt something 
at first within me which was not in strict 
unison with the lesson of virtue I had given 
her the night before; — I sought five min- 
utes for a card ; I knew I had not one. I 
took up a pen, — I laid it down again, — my 
hand trembled: — the Devil was in me. 

I know as well as any one he is an ad- 
versary ; whom, if we resist, he will fly 
from us; but I seldom resist him at all, 
from a terror that, though I may conquer, 
I may still get a hurt in the combat; — so I 
give up the triumph for security; and, in- 
stead of thinking to make him fly, I gene- 
rally fly myself. 

The fair Jille de chambre came close up 
to the bureau, where I was looking for a 
card, — took up first the pen I cast down, 
then offer'd to hold me the ink ; she offer'd 
it so sweetly, I was going to accept it, but 
f durst not; — I have nothing, my dear, said 
I, t) write upon. — Write it, said she, sim- 
ply, upon any thing. 

— I was juet going to cry out, Then I 
will write it, fair girl, upon thy lips. 

- -If I do. said I T shall perish : so I took 



\L JOURNEY 

her by the hand, and led her to the door 
and begg'd she would not forget the lesson 
I had given her. — She said, indeed she 
would not, and as she uttered it with some 
earnestness, she turn'd about, and gave me 
both her hands, closed together, into mine; 
— it was impossible not to compress them in 
that situation : — I wish'd to let them go ; 
and, all the time I held them, I kept arguing 
within myself against it, — and still I held 
them on. — In two minutes I found I had all 
the battle to fight over again ; — and I felt 
my legs and every limb about me tremble 
at the idea. 

The foot of the bed was within a yard and 
a half of the place where we were standing, 
— I had still hold of her hands — (and how it 
happened, I can give no account ;) but I 
neither asked her, nor drew her, nor did I 
think of the bed ; — but so it did happen, we 
both sat down. 

I'll just show you, said the fair Jille de 
chambre, the little purse I have been mak- 
ing to-day to hold your crown. So she put 
her hand into her right pocket, which was 
next me, and felt for it some time ; — then 
into the left. — "She had lost it." — I 
never bore expectation more quietly; — it 
was in her right pocket at last; she pull'd 
it out ; it was of green taffeta, lined with a 
little bit of white quilted satin, and just big 
enough to hold the crown : — she put it into 
my hand ; it was pretty, and I held it teD 
minutes, with the back of my hand resting 
upon her lap, looking sometimes at the purse, 
sometimes on one side of it. 

A stitch or two had broke out in the 
gathers of my stock ; the fair Jille de cham- 
bre, without saying a word, took out- her 
little housewife, threaded a small needle, 
and sewed it up. I foresaw it would haz- 
ard the glory of the day, and as she passed 
her hand in silence across and across my 
neck in the manoeuvre, I felt the laurels 
shake which fancy had wreathed about my 
head. 

A strap had given way in her walk, and 
the buckle of her shoe was just falling off. 
— See, said the Jille de chambre, holding 
up her foot, — I could not from my soul but 
fasten the buckle in return ; and, putting in 
the strap, — and lifting up the other foot with 
it, when I had done, to see both were right, 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



313 



in doing it so suddenly, it unavoidably threw 
the fair Jille de chambre off her centre, - ■ 
and then — 



THE CONQUEST. 

Yes, — and then— ^— Ye, whose clay-cold 
heads and lukewarm hearts can argue down 
or mask your passions, tell me, what tres- 
pass is it that man should have them 1 or 
how his spirit stands answerable to the 
Father of spirits but for his conduct under 
them 1 

If Nature has so wove her web of kind- 
ness, that some threads of love and desire 
are entangled with the piece, — must the 
whole web be rent iu drawing them out 7 — 
Whip me such stoics, great Governor of 
Nature! said I to myself: — wherever thy 
Providence shall place me for the trials of 
my virtue; whatever is my danger, — what- 
ever is my situation, — let me feel the move- 
ments which rise out of it, and which belong 
to me as a man, — and, if I govern them as 
a good one, I will trust the issues to thy 
justice ; for thou hast made us, and not we 
ourselves. 

As I finished my address, I raised the fail- 
le de chambre up by the hand, and led 
her out of the room ; — she stood by me till 
I locked the door and put the key in my 
pocket, — and then, — the victory being quite 
decisive, — and not till then, I pressed my 
lips to her cheek, and, taking her by the 
hand again, led her safe to the gate of the 
hotel. 



THE MYSTERY. 



If a man knows the heart, he will know 
it was impossible to go back instantly to my 
chamber ; —it was touching a cold key with 
a flat third to it, upon the close of a piece 
of music, which had called forth my affec- 
tions ; therefore, when I let go the hand of 
the file de chambre, I remain'd at the gate 
of the hotel for some time, looking at every 
one who pass'd by, and forming conjectures 
\ipon them, till my attention got fix'd upon 
2P 



a single object which confounded all kind 
of reasoning upon him. 

It was a tall figure, of a philosophic, seri 
ous, adust look, which pass'd and repassV 
sedately along the street, making a turn of 
j about sixty paces on each side of the gate 
of the hotel. — The man was about fifty-two. 
had a small cane under his arm, was dress VI 
in a dark drab-colored coat, waistcoat, and 
breeches, which seem'd to have seen some 
years' service; — they were still clean, and 
there was a little air of frugal proprete 
throughout him. By his pulling off his hat, 
and his attitude of accosting a good many 
in his way, I saw he was asking charity ; so 
I got a sous or two out of my pocket ready 
to give him, as he took me in his turn. He 
pass'd by me without asking any thing, — 
and yet did not go five steps farther before 
he ask'd charity of a little woman, — I was 
much more likely to have given of the two. 
He had scarce done with the woman, when 
he pull'd his hat off to another who was com- 
ing the same way. An ancient gentleman 
came slowly, and, afler him, a young smart 
one. He let them both pass, and ask'd no- 
thing; I stood observing him half-an-hour ; 
in which time he had made a dozen turns 
backwards and forwards, and found that he 
invariably pursued the same plan. 

There were two things very singular in 
this, which set my brain to work, and to no 
purpose ; — the first was, Why the man 
should only tell his story to the sex ; — and 
secondly, What kind of story it was, and 
what species of eloquence it could be, which 
soften'd the hearts of the women, which he 
knew 'twas to no purpose to practise upon 
the men. 

There were two other circum c tances 
which entangled this mystery: — the one 
was, He told every woman what he had to 
say in her ear, and in a way which had 
much more the air of a secret, than a peti- 
tion ; — the other was, It was always success- 
ful ; — he never stopp'd a woman but she 
pull'd out her purse, and immediately gave 
him something. 

I could form no system to explain the 
phenomenon. 

I had got a riddle t:> amuse me for too 
rest of the evening ; so I walk'd up stairs is 
my chamber. 

27 



3)4 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THE CASE OF CONSCIENCE. 

PARIS. 

[ was immediately followed up by the 
master of the hotel, who came into my room 
to tell me I must provide lodgings else- 
where. — How so, friend! said I. — He an- 
swer'd, I had a young woman lock'd up 
with ra>: wo hours that evening in my bed- 
chamber, and 'twas against the rules of his 
house. — Very well, said I, we'll all part 
friends then, — for the girl is no worse, — and 
I am no worse, — and you will be just as I 
found you. — It was enough, he said, to over- 
throw the credit of his hotel. — Voyez vous, 
Monsieur, said he, pointing to the foot of 
the bed we had been sitting upon. — I own 
it had something of the appearance of an 
evidence; but my pride not suffering me to 
enter into any detail of the case, I exhorted 
him to let his soul sleep in peace, as I re- 
solved to let mine do that night, and that I 
would discharge what I owed him at break- 
fast. 

— I should not have minded, Monsieur, 
said he, if you had had twenty girls, — 'Tis 
a score more, replied I, interrupting him, 
than I ever reckoned upon. — Provided, 
added he, it had been but in a morning. — 
And does the difference of the time of the 
day, at Paris, make a difference in the sin 1 
— It made a difference, he said, in the scan- 
dal. — I like a good distinction in my heart ; 
and cannot say I was intolerably out of tem- 
per with the man. — I own it necessary, re- 
sumed the master of the hotel, that a stran- 
ger at Paris should have the opportunities 
presented to him of buying lace and silk 
stockings, and ruffles, et tout cela ; — and 'tis 
nothing if a woman comes with a band-box. 
— O' my conscience, said I, she had one ; 
but I never l^ok'd into it. — Then, Monsieur, 
said he, has bought nothing. — Not one earth- 
ly thing, replied I. — Because, said he, I 
could recommend you to one who would use 
you en conscience. — But I must see her this 
night, said I. — He made me a low bow, and 
walk'd down. 

Now shall I triumph over this maitre 
iV hotel, cried I: — and what then ] Then I 
shall let him see I know he is a dirty fellow. 
- -And what then 1 What then ! — I was too 
near myself to say it was for the sake of 
"juiers. — [ had no good answer left; — there 



was more of spleen than of principle in my 
project, and I was sick of it before the exe- 
cution. 

In a few minutes the grisette came in 
with her box of lace. — I'll buy nothing, how 
ever, said I, within myself. 

The grisette would show me every thing. 
— I was hard to please : she would not seem 
to see it. She open'd her little magazine, 
and laid all her laces, one after another, be- 
fore me ; — unfolded and folded them up 
again, one by one, with the most patient 
sweetness. — I might buy, — or not; — she 
would let me have every thing at my own 
price : — the poor creature seem'd anxious to 
get a penny ; and laid herself out to win me, 
and not so much in a manner which seem'd 
artful, as in one I felt simple and caressing 

If there is not a fund of honest cullibility 
in man, so much the worse ; — my heart re- 
lented, and I gave up my second resolution 
as quietly as the first. — Why should I chas- 
tise one for the trespass of another 1 If thou 
art tributary to this tyrant of an host, thought 
I, looking up in her face, so much harder ia 
thy bread. 

If I had not had more than four Louia 
d'ors in my purse, there was no such thing 
as rising up and showing her the door till I 
had first laid three of them out in a pair of 
ruffles. 

— The master of the hotel will share the 
profit with her ; — no matter, — then I have 
only paid, as many a poor soul has paid 
before me, for an act he could not do, or 
think of. 



THE RIDDLE. 



When La Fleur came up to wait upon 
me at supper, he told me how sorry the 
master of the hotel was, for his affront to me 
in bidding me change my lodgings. 

A man who values a good night's rest 
will not lie down with enmity in his heart, 
if he can help it. — So I bid La Fleur tell 
the master of the hotel, that I was sorry on 
my side for the occasion I had given him; 
— and you may tell him if you will, La Fleur, 
added I, that if the young woman should 
call again, I shall not see her. • 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 315 



This was a sacrifice not to him, but my- 
self, having resolv'd, after so narrow an 
escape, to run no more risks, but to leave 
Paris, if it was possible, with all the virtue 
T entered it. 

Cest deroger a noblesse, Monsieur, said 
La Fleur, making me a bow down to the 
ground as he said it. — Et encore, Monsieur, 
said he, may change his sentiments ; — and 
if (par hazard) he should like to amuse 
himself, — I find no amusement in it, said I, 
interrupting- him. 

— Mon Dieu! said La Fleur, — and took 
away. 

In an hour's time he came to put me to 
bed, and was more than commonly officious ; 
— something hung upon his lips to say to 
me, or ask me, which he could not get off: 
I could not conceive what it was ; and indeed 
gave myself little trouble to find it out, as 
I had another riddle so much more interest- 
ing upon my mind, which was that of the 
man's asking charity before the door of the 
hotel. — I would have given any thing to 
have got to the bottom of it ; and that not 
out of curiosity, — 'tis so low a principle of 
inquiry, in general, I would not purchase 
the gratification of it with a two-sous piece ; 
— but a secret, I thought, which so soon and 
so certainly soften'd the heart of every wo- 
man you came near, was a secret at least 
equal to the philosopher's stone : had I had 
both the Indies, I would have given up one 
to have been master of it. 

I toss'd and turn'd it almost all night long 
in my brains, to no manner of purpose ; and 
when I awoke in the morning, I found my 
spirits as much troubled with my dreams, 
as ever the King of Babylon had been with 
his; and I will not hesitate to affirm, it 
would have puzzled all the wise men of 
Paris as much as those of Chaldea, to have 
given its interpretation. 



LE DIMANCHE. 



It was Sunday; and when La Fleur 
came in, in the morning, with my coffee 
and roll and butter, he had got himself so 
gallantly array'd, I scarce knew him. 

I had covenanted at Montriul to give him 



a new hat with a silver button and four 
Louis d'ors your s'adoniscr, when we got 
to Paris; and the poor fellow, to do hirw 
justice, had done wonders with it. 

He had bought a bright, clean, good scai 
let coat, and a pair of breeches of tin; same 
— They were not a crown worse, he said, 
for the wearing. — I wish'd him hang'd for 
telling me. — They look'd so fresh, that 
though I knew the thing could not be done, 
yet I would rather have imposed upon my 
fancy with thinking I had bought them new 
for the fellow, than that they had come out 
of the Rue de Friperie. 

This is a nicety which makes not the 
heart sore at Paris. 

He had purchased, moreover, a handsome 
blue satin waistcoat, fancifully enough em- 
broidered : — This was indeed something 
the worse for the service it had done, but 
'twas clean scour'd, — the gold had been 
touch'd up, and, upon the whole, was rather 
showy than otherwise; — and as the blue 
was not violent, it suited with the coat and 
breeches very well : he had squeezed out 
of the money, moreover, a new bag and a 
solitaire; and had insisted with the fripier 
upon a gold pair of garters to his breeches' 
knees. — He had purchased muslin ruffles 
bien brodees, with four livres of his own 
money ; — and a pair of white silk stockings 
for five more; — and, to top all, Nature had 
given him a handsome figure, without cost- 
ing him a sous. 

He entered the room thus set off, with 
his hair drest in the first style, and with 
a handsome bouquet in his breast. — In a 
word, there was that look of festivity in 
every thing about him, which at once pur. 
me in mind it was Sunday — and by com- 
bining both together, it instantly struck 
me, that the favor he wish'd to ask of me 
the night before, was to spend the day as 
every body in Paris spent it besides. I had 
scarce made the conjecture, when La Fleur, 
with infinite humility, but with a look of 
trust, as if I should not refuse him, begg'd 
I would grant him the day, pour fain- lc 
galant vis-d-vis de sa maitresse. 

Now it was the very thing I intended to 
do myself vis-d-vis Madame de R**** — I 
had retained the remise on purpose for n, 
and it would not have mortified my vanity 
to have had a servant so well dress'd as Lh 



316 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



Fleur was, to have got up behind it : I 
never could have worse spared him. 

But we must feel, not argue, in these 
embarrassments ; — the sons and daughters 
of Service part with liberty, but not with 
nature, in their contracts; they are flesh 
and b'^od, and have their little vanities and 
wishes in the midst of the house of bond- 
age, as well as their task-masters; — no 
doubt, they have set their self-denials at a 
price, — and their expectations are so un- 
reasonable, that I would often disappoint 
them, but that their condition puts it so 
much in my power to do it. 

Behold, — Behold, I am thy servant, — 
disarms me at once of the powers of a 
Master. 

— Thou shalt go, La Fleur, said I. 

— And what mistress, La Fleur, said I, 
canst thou have pick'd up in so little a time 
at Paris ? — La Fleur laid his hand upon his 
breast, and said, 'Twas a petit demoiselle, 
at Monsieur le Count de B****'s. La Fleur 
had a heart made, for society ; and to speak 
the truth' of him, let as few occasions slip 
him as his master, — so that, somehow or 
other, — but how, — Heaven knows, — he had 
connected himself with the demoiselle upon 
the landing of the staircase, during the 
time I w r as taken up with my passport; 
and as there was time enough for me to 
win the Count to my interest, La Fleur had 
contrived to make it do to win the maid to 
his. The family, it seems, was to be at 
Paris that day, and he had made a party 
with her, and two or three more of the 
Count's household, upon the boulevards. 

Happy people ! that once a week at least 
are sure to lay down all your cares to- 
gether, and dance and sing, and sport away 
the weights of grievance, which bow down 
the spirit of other nations to the earth. 



THE FRAGMENT. 

PARIS. 

La Fleur had left, me something to 
/•muse myself with for the day, more than I 
had bargained for, or could have entered 
either into his head or mine. 

He had brought the little print of butter 
upon a currant-leaf; and, as the morning 



was warm, and he had a good step to bring 
it, he had begged a sheet of waste paper to 
put betwixt the currant-leaf and his hand. 
— As that was plate sufficient, I bade him 
lay it upon the table as it was; and as I 
resolved to stay within all day, I ordered 
him to call upon the traiteur, to besDeak 
my dinner, and leave me to breakfast by 
myself. 

When I had finished the butter, I threw 
the currant-leaf out of the window, and was 
going to do the same by the waste paper ; 
— but, stopping to read a line first, and that 
drawing me on to a second and a third, — 1 
thought it better worth ; so I shut the win- 
dow, and drawing a chair up to it, I sat 
down to read it. 

It was in the old French of Rabelais's 
time ; and, for aught I know, might have 
been wrote by him : it was, moreover, in a 
Gothic letter, and that so faded and gone orF 
by damps and length of time, it cost me in- 
finite trouble to make any thing of it. — I 
threw it down ; and then wrote a letter to 
Eugenius, — then I took it up again, and 
embroiled my patience with it afresh ; — 
and then, to cure that, I wrote a letter to 
Eliza. — Still it kept hold of me; and the 
difficulty of understanding it, increased but 
the desire. 

I got my dinner; and after I had enlight- 
ened my mind with a bottle of Burgundy, I 
at it again ; — and after two or three hours 
poring upon it, with almost as deep atten 
tion as ever Gruter or Jacob Spon did upon 
a nonsensical inscription, I thought I made 
sense of it; but to make sure of it, the best 
way, I imagined, was to turn it into Eng- 
lish, and see how it would look then : — so 
I went on leisurely, as a trifling man does, 
sometimes writing a sentence, — then takino 
a turn or two, — and then looking how the 
world went, out of the window; so that it 
was nine o'clock at night before I had done 
it. — I then began, and read it as follows: — 



THE FRAGMENT. 



— Now as the Notary's wife disputed the 
point with the Notary with too much heat, 
— 1 wish, said the Notary (throwing down 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



317 



the parchment), that there was another 
Notary here, only to set down and attest 
all this. 

— And what would you do then, Mon- 
sieur 7 said she, rising hastily up. — The 
Notary's wife was a little fume of a woman, 
and the Notary thought it well to avoid a 
hurricane by a mild reply. — I would go, 
answered he, to bed. — You may go to the 
Devil, answered the Notary's wife. 

Now there happening to be but one bed 
in the house, the other two rooms being 
unfurnished, as is the custom at Paris, and 
the Notary not caring to lie in the same 
bed with a woman who had but that mo- 
ment sent him pell-mell to the Devil, went 
f )rth with his hat and cane, and short cloak, 
the night being very windy, and walk'd 
out ill at ease towards the Pont Neuf. 

Of all the bridges which ever were built, 
the whole world who have pass'd over the 
Pont Neuf must own, that it is the noblest, 
— the finest, — the grandest, — the lightest, 
— the longest, — the broadest, that ever con- 
joint land and land together upon the face 
of the terraqueous globe. — 

By this it seems as if the author of the 
Fragment had not been a Frenchman. 

The worst fault which Divines and the 
Doctors of the Sorbonne can allege against 
it, is, that if there is but a cap-full of wind 
in or about Paris, 'tis more blasphemously 
sacre Dieu'd there than in any other aper- 
ture of the whole city, — and with reason, 
good and cogent, Messieurs ; for it comes 
against you without crying garde d'eau, 
and with such unpremeditable puffs, that of 
the few who cross it with their hats on, not 
one in fifty but hazards two livres and a 
half, which is its full worth. 

The poor Notary, just as he was passing 
by the sentry, instinctively clapp'd his cane 
to the side of it; but in raising it up he 
point of his cane catching hold of the sen- 
tinel's hat, hoisted it over the spikes of the 
ba.ustrade clear into the Seine. 

— 'Tis an ill wind, said a boatman, who 
catch d it, which blows nobody any good. 

The sentry, being a Gascon, incontinently 
twirl'd up his whiskers, and levell'd his 
arquebuse. 

Arquebuses in those days went off with 
matches ; and an old woman's paper lantern 
at the end of the bridge happening to be 



blown out, she had borrowed the sentry's 
match to light it; — it gave a moment'b 
time for the Gascon's blood to run cool, and 
turn the accident better to his advantage. — 
'Tis an ill wind, said he, catching off the 
Notary's castor, and legitimating the cap- 
ture with the boatman's adage. 

The poor Notary cross'd the bridge, and 
passing along the Rue de Dauphine into 
the Fauxbourg of St. Germain, lamented 
himself as he walked along in this man- 
ner :— 

Luckless man that I am ! said the Notary, 
to be the sport of hurricanes all my days ! — 
to be born to have the storm of ill language 
levell'd against me and my profession 
wherever I go ! — to be forced into marriage 
by the thunder of the church to a tempest 
of a woman ! — to be driven forth out of my 
house by domestic winds, and despoil'd of 
my castor by pontific ones! — to be here, 
bare-headed, in a windy night, at the mer- 
cy of the ebbs and flows of accidents! — 
Where am I to lay my head ! — Miserable 
man ! what wind in the two-and-thirty 
points in the whole compass can blow unto 
thee, as it does the rest of thy fellow-crea- 
tures, good ! 

As the Notary was passing on by a dark 
passage, complaining in this sort, a voice 
called out to a girl, to bid her run for the 
next Notary. — Now the Notary being the 
next, and availing himself of his situation, 
walk'd up the passage to the door, and pass- 
ing through an old sort of saloon, was 
ushered into a large chamber, dismantled 
of every thing but a long military pike, — a 
breast-plate, — a rusty old sword, and bando- 
leer, hung up equidistant in four different 
places against the wall. 

An old personage, who had heretofoie 
been a gentleman, and unless decay of for- 
tune taints the blood along with it, was a 
gentleman at that time, lay supporting his 
head upon his hand, in his bed ; a little ta- 
ble with a taper burning was set close be- 
side it, and close by the table was placed a 
chair, — the Notary sat him down in it; and 
pulling out his inkhorn and a sheet or tw« 
of paper which he had in his pocket, he 
placed them before him, and dipping hm 
pen in his ink, and leaning his breast over 
the table, he disposed every thing to make 
the gentleman's last will and testament. 
27* 



318 



SENTIMENT 



— Alas! Monsieur le Notaire, said the 
gentleman, raising himself up a little, I 
nave nothing 1 to bequeath, which will pay 
the expense of bequeathing, except the 
history of myself, which I could not die in 
peace unless I left it as a legacy to the 
world; the profits arising out of it I be- 
queath to you for the pains of taking it 
from me. — It is a story so uncommon, it 
must be read by all mankind ; — it will make 
the fortunes of your house. — The Notary 
dipp'd his pen into the inkhorn. — Almighty 
Director of every event in my life ! said the 
old gentleman, looking up earnestly, and 
raising his hands towards Heaven, — Thou, 
whose hand has led me on through such a 
labyrinth of strange passages down into 
this scene of desolation, assist the decaying 
memory of an old, infirm, and broken- 
hearted man ! — Direct my tongue by the 
spirit of thy eternal truth, that this stran- 
ger may set down nought but what is writ- 
ten in that Book, from whose records, said 
he, clasping his hands together, I am to be 
condemn'd or acquitted ! — the Notary held 
up the point of his pen betwixt the taper 
and his eye. 

— It is a story, Monsieur le Notaire, said 
the gentleman, which will rouse up every 
affection in Nature; — it will kill the hu- 
mane, and touch the heart of Cruelty her- 
self with pity. — 

The Notary was inflamed with a desire 
to begin, and put his pen a third time into 
his inkhorn ! — and the old gentleman, turn- 
ing a little more towards the Notary, began 
to dictate his story in these words : — 

— And where is the rest of it, La Fleur 1 
said I, — as he just then enter'd the room. 



AI JOURNEY 

gether, which he had presented to the tie* 
moiselle upon the boulevards. — Then pri- 
thee, La Fleur, said I, step back to her, to 
the Count de B****'s hotel, and see if thou 
canst get it. — There is no doubt of it, said 
La Fleur ; — and away he flew. 

In a very little time the poor fellow came 
back, quite out of breath, with deeper marks 
of disappointment in his looks, than could 
arise from the simple irreparability of the 
fragment. Juste del! in less than two 
minutes that the poor fellow had taken his 
last tender farewell of her, — his faithless 
mistress had given his gage a" amour to 
one of the Count's footmen, — the footman 
to a young sempstress, — and the sempstress 
to a fiddler, with my fragment at the end 
of it. — Our misfortunes were involved to- 
gether; — I gave a sigh, — and La Fleur 
echo'd it back again to my ear. 

— How perfidious ! cried La Fleur. — How 
unlucky ! said I. 

— I should not have been mortified, Mon- 
sieur, quoth La Fleur, if she had lost it. — 
Nor I, La Fleur, said I, had I found it. 

Whether I did or no, will be seen here- 
after. 



THE FRAGMENT, 
AND THE BOUQUET.* 

PARIS. 

When La Fleur came close up to the 
table, and was made to comprehend what I 
wanted he told me there were only two 
other sneets of it, which he had wrapped 
round tiie stalks of a bouquet to keep it to- 

* Nost'gay. 



THE ACT OF CHARITY. 

PARIS. 

The man who either disdains or fears tc 
walk up a dark entry, may be an excellent 
good man, and fit for a hundred things ; but 
he will not do to make a good Sentimental 
Traveller. I count little of the many things 
I see pass at broad noon-day, in large and 
open streets. — Nature is shy, and hates to 
act before spectators; but in such an unob- 
served corner you sometimes see a single 
shor* .'^ene of hers, worth all the senti- 
ments of a dozen French plays compounded 
together, — and yet they are absolutely fine; 
— and whenever I have a more brilliant 
affair upon my hands than common, as they 
suit a preacher just as well as a hero. I 
generally make my sermon out of 'em :— 
and for the text, — " Cappadocia, Pontus and 
"Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia," — is as 
good as any one in the Bible. 

There is a long dark passage issuing out 
from the Ojiera Comique into a namrP 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITAO 
street ; 'tis trod by a few who humbly wait for 



310 



nJitfcre,*orwish togetoffquietlyo'footwhcn 
the opera is done. At the end of it, towards 
the theatre, 'tis lighted by a small candle, 
the light of which is almost lost before you 
get half-way down, but near the door ; — 'tis 
more for ornament than use: you see it as 
a fix'd star of the least magnitude: — it 
burns, — but does- little good to the world, 
that we know of. 

In returning along this passage, I dis- 
cern'd, as I approaclrd within five or six- 
paces of the door, two ladies standing, arm 
in arm, with their backs against the wall, 
waiting, as I imagined, for a. fiacre: — as 
they were next the door, I thought they 
had a prior right ; so edged myself up with- 
in a yard or little more of them, and quietly 
took my stand, — I was in black, and scarce 
teen. 

The lady next me was a tall lean figure 
of a woman, of about thirty-six ; the other, 
of the same size and make, of about forty : 
there was no mark of wife or widow in any 
one part of either of them, — they seem'd to 
he two upright vestal sisters, unsapp'd by 
caresses, unbroke in upon by tender saluta- 
tions. I could have wish'd to have made 
them happy ; — their happiness was destin'd, 
that night, to come from another quarter. 

A low voice, with a good turn of expres- 
sion, and sweet cadence at the end of it, 
begg'd for a twelve-sous piece betwixt them, 
for the love of Heaven. I thought it singu- 
lar that a beggar should fix the quota of an 
alms, — and that the sum should be twelve 
times as much as what is usually given in 
the dark. They both seem'd astonish'd at 
it as much as myself. — Twelve sous! said 
one. — A twelve-sous piece ! said the other, 
— and made no reply. 

— The poor man said, he knew not how 
to ask less of ladies of their rank ; and 
bow'd d^wn his head to the ground. 

— Poo! said they, — we have no money. 

The beggar remained silent for a mo- 
ment or two, and renew'd his supplication. 

— Do not, my fair young ladies, said he, 
stop your good ears against me. — Upon my 
woru. honest man ! said the younger, w r e 
have no change. — Then God bless you ! said 
the poor man, and multiply those joys which 



* Hackney-coach. 



you can give to others, without < »iange ! — 
I observed the eldest sister put her hand 
into her pocket. — I'll see, said she, if I 
have a sous! — A sous ! give twelve, said 
the supplicant; Nature has been bountifu 
to you ; be bountiful to a poor man. 

— I would, friend, with all my heart, said 
the younger, if I had it. 

— My fair charitable ! said he, addressing 
himself to the elder, — what is it but your 
goodness and humanity which makes your 
bright eyes so sweet, that they outshine the 
morning, even in this dark passage? and 
what was it which made the Marquis de 
Santerre and his brother say so much of 
you both as they just pass'd by ? 

The two ladies seemed much affected; 
and impulsively at the same time they both 
put their hands into their pocket, and each 
took out a twelve-sous piece. 

The contest betwixt them and tnc poor 
supplicant was no more, — it was continued 
betwixt themselves, which of the two should 
give the twelve-sous piece in charity ; — and, 
to end the dispute, they both gave it to- 
gether, and the man went away. 



THE RIDDLE EXPLAINED 

PARIS. " 

I stepped hastily after him : it was the 
very man whose success in asking charity 
of the women before the door of the hotel 
had so puzzled me; — and 1 found at once 
his secret, or at least the basis of it : — 'twas 
flattery. 

Delicious essence ! how refreshing art 
thou to Nature ! how strongly are all its 
powers and all its weaknesses on thy side ! 
how sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, 
and help it through the most difficult and 
tortuous passages to the heart ! 

The poor man, as he was not straiten d 
for time, had given it here in a larger dose, 
'tis certain he had a way of bringing it int<< 
less form, for the many sudden cases he had 
to do with in the st eets ; but how he con- 
trived to correct, sweeten, concentre, and 
qualify it, — I vex nol my spirit with the in- 
quiry; — it is enough, the becgar gained 
two twelve-sous pieces, — and they can best 
tell the rest who have gained much grea «r 
matters by it. 



320 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



PiVRTS. 

We set forwards in the world, not so 
much by doing services as receiving them : 
you take a withering twig, and put it in 
the ground ; and then you water it, because 
you have planted it. 

Mons. le Count de B****, merely because 
he had done me one kindness in the affair 
of my passport, would go on and do me an- 
other, the few days he was at Paris, in mak- 
ing me known to a few people of rank ; and 
they were to present me to others, and so on. 

I had got master of my secret just in time 
to turn these honors to some little account; 
otherwise, as is commonly the case, I should 
have din'd or supp'd a single time or two 
round ; and then, by translating French 
looks and attitudes into plain English, I 
should presently have seen that I had gold 
out of the convert* of some more entertain- 
mgguest ; and, in course, should have resign- 
ed all my places, one after another, merely 
upon the principle that I could not keep 
them. — As it was, things did not go much 
amiss. 

I had the honor of being introduced to the 
old Marquis de B****. In days of yore he 
had signaliz'd himself by some small feats 
e)f chivalry in the Cour d' Amour, and had 
"cfress'd himself out to the idea of tilts and 
tournaments ever since. — The Marquis de 
B**** wish'd to have it thought the affair 
was somewhere else than in his brain. "He 
" could like to take a trip to England ;" and 
ssk'd much of the English ladies. — Stay 
tfhere you are, I beseech you, Mons. le Mar- 
quis, said I. — Les Messieurs Anglois can 
scarce get a kind look from them as it is. — 
The Marquis invited me to supper. 

Mons. P****, the farmer-general, was just 
as inquisitive about our taxes. — They were 
very considerable, he heard. — If we knew 
but how to collect them, said I, making him 
a low bow. 

I could never have been invited to Mons. 
P****'s concerts upon any other terms. 

I had been misrepresented to Madame de 
Q*** as an esprit. — Madame de Q*** was 
an esprit herself: she burnt with impatience 
to see me, and hear me talk. I had not 
'»ken my seat, before I saw she did not care 

Plate, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon. 



a sous whether I had any wit or no. — I wrns 
let in to be convinced she had. — I call Hea- 
ven to witness, I never once open'd the door 
of my lips. 

Madame de V*** vow'd to every creature 
sne met, " She had never had a morf itnprov- 
" ing conversation with a man in her life." 

There are three epochas in the empire 
of a French woman : — She is coquette, — 
then Deist, — then devote: the empire during 
these is never lost ; — she only changes 
her subjects ; when thirty-five years and 
more have unpeopled her dominions of the 
slaves of love, she repeoples it with the 
slaves of infidelity, and then with the slaves 
of the church. 

Madame de V*** was vibrating betwixt 
the first of these epochas : the color of the 
rose was fading fast away ; — she ought to 
have been a Deist five years before the time 
I had the honor to pay my first visit. 

She placed me upon the same sofa with 
her, for the sake of disputing the point of 
religion more closely. — In short, Madame 
de V*** told me she believed nothing. — I 
told Madame de V*** it might be her prin- 
ciple ; but I was sure it could not be her in- 
terest to level the outworks, without which 
I could not conceive how such a citadel as 
hers could be defended; — that there was 
not a more dangerous thing in the worll 
than for a beauty to be a Deist; — that it 
was a debt I owed my creed, not to conceal 
it from her; — that I had not been five min- 
utes sat upon the sofa beside her, but I had 
begun to form designs ; — and what is it but 
the sentiments of religion, and the persua- 
sion they had excited in her breast, whicn 
could have check'd them' as they rcse up? 

— We are not adamant, said I, taking 
hold of her hand ; — and there is need of all 
restraints, till Age in her own time steals 
in and lays them on us. — But, my dear lady, 
said I, kissing her hand, — 'tis too — too soon. 

I declare I had the credit all over Paris 
)f unperverting Madame de V***. — She 
affirmed to Mons. D*** and the Abbe M*** 
that in one half hour I had said more for re- 
vealed religion than all their Encyclopedia 
had said against it. — I was listed directly 
into Madame de V***'s coterie; — and she 
put off the epocha of Deism for two years. 

I remember it was in this coterie, in the 
middle of a discourse, in which I was show- 




MARIA. 



ing the necessity of a Jirst cause, that the 
young Count de Faineant took me by the 
hand to the farthest corner of the room, to 
tell me my solitaire was pinn'd too strait 
about my neck. — It should be plus badinant, 
said the Count, looking down upon his own ; 
— hut a word, Mons. Yorick, to the wise, — 

— And from the wise, Mons. le Count, 
replied I, making him a bow, — is enough. 

The Count de Faineant embraced me 
wi h more ardor than ever I was embraced 
by mortal man. 

For three weeks together, I was of every 
man's opinion I met. — Pardi? ce Mons. 
Yorick a autant dh-sprit que nous autres. 
— Tl raisonne bicn, said another. — Cest un 
bon enfant, said a third. — And at this price 
1 could have eaten and drunk and been merry 
all the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas 
a dishonest reckoning; — I grew ashamed 
of it. — It was the gain of a slave — every 
sentiment of honor revolted against it ; — the 
higher I got, the more was I forced upon 
my beggarly system ; — the better the co- 
terie, — the more children of Art, — I lan- 
guished for those of Nature; and one night, 
after a most vile prostitution of myself to 
half a dozen different people, I grew sick, 
— went to bed, — ordered La Fleur to get 
me horses in the morning to set out for Italy. 



MARIA. 

MOULINES. 

I never felt what the distress of plenty 
was in any one shape till now, — to travel 
it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest 
part of France, — in the hey-day of the 
vintage, v hen Nature is pouring her abun- 
dance into every one's lap, and every eye is 
lifted up, — a journey through each step of 
which music beats time to Labor, and all 
her children are rejoicing as they carry in 
their clusters; — to pass through this with 
my affections flying out, and kindling at 
every group before me, — and every one of 
them was pregnant with adventures. — 

Just Heaven ! — it would fill up twenty 
volumes ; — and alas ! I have but a few small 
pnijes left of this to crowd it into, — and 
half of these must be taken up with the 
|vx>r Maria my friend Mr. Shandy met with 
near Moulines. 

1>Q 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 321 

The story he had told of that disordered 
I maid affected me not a little in the reading; 
but when I got within the neighborhood 
where she lived, it returned so strong into 
my mind, that I could not resist an impulse 
which prompted me to go half a league out 
of the road, to the village where her parents 
dwelt, to inquire after her. 

'Tis going, I own, like the knight of the 
Woful Countenance, in quest of melan- 
choly adventures; — I know not how it is, 
but I am never so perfectly conscious of the 
existence of a soul within me, as when I 
am entangled in them. 

The old mother came to the door; her 
looks told me the story before she opened 
her mouth. — She had lost her husband ; he 
had died, she said, of anguish, for the loss 
of Maria's senses, about a month before. — 
She had feared at first, she added, that it 
would have plundered her poor girl of what 
little understanding was left ; — but, on the 
contrary, it had brought her more to herself; 
— still she could not rest. — Her poor daugh- 
ter, she said, crying, was wandering some- 
where about the road. 

— Why does my pulse beat languid as I 
write this? and what made La Fleur, whose 
heart seem'd only to be tuned to joy, to pass 
the back of his hand twice across his eyes, 
as the woman stood and told it ? I beckoned 
to the postilion to turn back into the road. 

When we had got within half a league 
of Moulines, at the little opening in the 
road, leading to a thicket, I discovered poor 
Maria sitting under a poplar. — She was 
sitting with her elbow in her lap, and hei 
head leaning on one side within her hand . 
— a small brook ran at the foot of the tree 

I bid the postilion go on with the chaise 
to Moulines; — and La Fleur to bespeak 
my supper; — and that I would walk after 
him. 

She was dressed in white, and much at 
my friend described her, except that her 
hair hung loose, which before was twisted 
with a silken net. — She had superadded 
likewise to her jacket, a pale green riband, 
which fell across her shoulder to the waist ; 
at the end of which hung her pipe. — Her 
goat had been as faithless as her lover, 
and she had got a little dog in lieu of him, 
which she kept tied by a string to her f im .o 
As I looked at her dog, she diew 1 « ,> 



322 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



wards her with the string-. — "Thou shalt —Shorn indeed! and to the quick, said 



•• not leave me, Sylvio," said she. I looked 
in Maria's eyes, and saw she was thinking 
more of her father, than of her lover, or 
her little goat ; for as she uttered them, the 
t3ors trickled down her cheeks. 



I : — and wast thou in my own land, where 
I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, 
and shelter thee ; thou should'st eat of mv 
own bread, and drink of my own cup; — I 
would be kind to thy Sylvio; — in all thy 



I sat down close by her; and Maria let ; weaknesses and wanderings I would seek 



me wipe them away as they fell, with my 
handkerchief. — I then steeped it in my own, 
—and then in hers, — and then in mine, — 
and then I wiped hers again ; — and as I did 
it, I felt such undescribable emotions within 
me, as I am sure could not be accounted 
for from any combinations of matter and 
motion. 

I am positive I have a soul ; nor can all 
the books with which materialists have pes- 
tered the world, ever convince me to the 
contrary. 



MARIA. 



When Maria had come a little to herself, 
I ask'd her if she remembered a pale thin 
person of a man, who had sat down betwixt 
her and her goat about two years before ? 
— She said, she was unsettled much at that 
time, but remembered it upon two accounts: 
- That, ill as she was, she saw the person 
pitied her ; and next, That her goat had 
stolen his handkerchief, and she had beat 
him for the theft; — she had washed it, she 
said, in the brook, and kept it ever since in 
her pocket, to restore it to him, in case she 
should see him again ; which, she added, he 
had half-promised her. As she told me this, 
she took the handkerchief out of her pocket, 
to let me see it ; she had folded it up neatly 
in a couple of vine-leaves, tied round with 
a tendril. — On opening it, I saw an & mark- 
ed in one of the corners. 

— She had, since that, she told me, 
strayed as fai as Rome, and walked round 
St. Peter's once, — and returned back: — 
that she found her way alone across the 
Apennines, — had travelled over all Lom- 
bardy without money, — and through the 
flinty roads of Savoy without shoes: — how 
she had borne it, and how she had got sup- 
posed, she could not tell; — but God tem- 
pp.rj th*> winds, said Maria, to the shorn 



after thee, and bring thee back ; — when the 
sun went down, I would say my prayers, 
and when I had done, thou should'st play 
thy evening-song upon thy pipe : nor would 
the incense of my sacrifice be worse ac- 
cepted for entering Heaven alcng with that 
of a broken heart ! 

Nature melted within me as I uttered 
this; and Maria observing, as I took out 
my handkerchief, that it was steeped too 
much already to be of use, would needs go 
wash it in the stream. — And where will 
you dry it, Maria? said I. — I'll dry it in 
my bosom, said she; — 'twill do me good. 

— And is your heart still so warm, Ma- 
ria? said I. 

I touched upon the string on which hung 
all her sorrows ; — she looked with wistful 
disorder for some time in my face; and 
then, without saying any thing, took her 
pipe, and played her service to the Virgin. 
— The string I had touched ceased to vi- 
brate ; — in a moment or two Maria returned 
to herself, — let her pipe fall, — and rose up. 

And where are you going, Maria, said I. 
— She said, to Moulines. — Let us go, said I, 
together. — Maria put her arm within mine 
and lengthening the string to let the dog 
follow, — in that order we enter'd Moulines. 



MARIA. 

MONTRIUL. 

Though I hate salutations and greeting* 
in the market-place, yet when we got into 
the middle of this, I stopped to take my last 
look and last farewell of Maria. 

Maria, though not tall, was nevertheless 
of the first order of fine forms : — affliction 
had touched her looks with something that 
was scarce earthly; — still she was femi- 
nine ; — and so much w T as there about her of 
all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks 
for in woman, that could the traces be ever 
worn out of hei orain, and those of Eliza out 
of mine, she should not. only vat of my bread 



itntt Jnnk of my men cup, but Maria should 
lie 10 my bosom, and be unto me as a daugh- 
ter. 

Adieu, poor luckless maiden! — Imbibe 
the oil and wine which the compassion of a 
stranger, as he journey eth on his way, now 
pours into thy wounds; — the Being who 
has twice bruised thee can only bind them 
up for ever. 



THE BOURBONNOIS. 

There was nothing from which I had 
painted out for myself so joyous a riot of 
the affections, as in this journey in the vin- 
tage, through this part of France; but 
pressing through this gate of sorrow to it, 
my sufferings have totally unfitted me. In 
every scene of festivity I saw Maria in the 
back-ground of the piece, sitting pensive 
under her poplar: and I had got almost to 
Lyons before I was able to cast a shade 
across her. 

— Dear Sensibility ! source inexhausted 
of all that's precious in our joys, or costly 
in our sorrows, — thou chainest thy martyr 
down upon his bed of straw, — and 'tis thou 
who lift'st him up to Heaven! — Eternal 
fountain of our feeling ! — 'tis here I trace 
thee, — and this is thy " divinity which stirs 
" within me ;" — not that, in some sad and 
sickening moments, "my soul shrinks back 
4i upon herself, and startles at destruction .'" 
— mere pomp of words! — but that I feel 
some generous joys and generous cares be- 
yond myself; — all comes from thee, great 
— great Sensorium of the world ! which 
vibrates, if a hair of our heads but falls upon 
the ground, in the remotest desert of thy 
.•reation. — Touch'd with thee, Eugenius 
draws my curtain when I languish, — hears 
my tale of symptoms, and blames the wea- 
mer for the disorder of his nerves. Thou 
giv'st a portion of it sometimes to the 
roughest peasant who traverses the bleak- 
est mountains ; — he finds the lacerated lamb 
of another's flock. — This moment I behold 
him leaning with his head against his crook, 
with piteous inclination looking down upon 
it ! — Oh ! had I come one moment sooner ! 
— it bleeds to death! — his gentle heart 
bleeds with it ! 

Peace to thee, generous swain ! — I see 
rhou wilkest off with anguish, — but thy 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 329 

joys shall balance it ; — for happy is thy cot- 
tage, — and happy is the sharer of it, — and 
happy are the lambs which sport about vou. 



THE SUPPER. 

A shoe coming loose from the fore-foot 
of the thill-horse, at the beginning of the 
ascent of Mount Taurira, the postilion dis- 
mounted, twisted the shoe off, and put it in 
his pocket. As the ascent was of five or 
six miles, and that horse our main depend- 
ence, I made a point of having the shoe 
fasten'd on again as well as we could ; but 
the postilion had thrown away the nails ; 
and the hammer in the chaise-box being of 
no great use without them, I submitted to 
go on. 

He had not mounted half a mile higher, 
when coming to a flinty piece of road, the 
poor Devil lost a second shoe, and from off 
his other fore-foot. I then got out of the 
chaise in good earnest ; and seeing a house 
about a quarter of a mile to the left hand, 
with a great deal to do I prevailed upon the 
postilion to turn up to it. The look of the 
house, and of every thing about it, as we 
drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the dis- 
aster. — It was a little farm-house, surround- 
ed with about twenty acres of vineyard, 
about as much corn; — and close to the 
house, on one side, was a potagerie of an 
acre and a half, full of every thing which 
could make plenty in a French peasant's 
house ; — and, on the other side, was a little 
wood, which furnished wherewithal to dress 
it. It was about eight in the evening when 
I got to the house, — so I left the postilion 
to manage his point as he could ; and, for 
mine, I walk'd directly into the house. 

The family consisted of an old grey-headed 
man and his wife, with five or six sons and 
sons-in-law, and their several wives, and a 
joyous genealogy out of them. 

They were all sitting down together to 
their lentil-soup; a large wheaten loaf was 
in the middle of the table ; and a flagon of 
wine at each end of it promised joy through 
the stages of the repast : — 'twas a feast of 
love. 

The old man rose up to meet me, and. 
with a respectful cordiality, would have mn 
sit down at the t-ble; mv heart was set 



324 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



down the moment I entered the room: so I 
sat down at once, like a son of the family ; 
and, to invest myself in the character as 
speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed 
the old man's knife, and taking up the loaf, 
cut myself a hearty luncheon ; and, as I 
did it, I saw a testimony in every eye, not 
only of an honest welcome, but of a wel- 
come mix'd with thanks that I had not 
seem'd to doubt it. 

Was it this] or tell me, Nature, what 
else it was that made this morsel so sweet, 
— and to what magic I owe it, that the 
draught I took of their flagon was so de- 
licious with it, that they remain upon my 
palate to this hour ? 

If the supper was to my .taste, — the grace 
which followed it was much more so. 



THE GRACE. 

When supper was over, the old man 
gave a knock upon the table with the haft 
of his knife, to bid them prepare for the 
dance; the moment the signal was given, 
the women and girls ran all together into a 
back apartment to tie up their hair, — and 
the young- men to the door to wash their 
faces, and change their sabots ; and, in 
three minutes, every soul was ready upon a 
little esplanade before the house to begin. 
— The old man and his wife came out last, 
and, placing me betwixt them, sat down 
upon a sofa of turf by the door. 

The old man had some fifty years ago 
oeen no mean performer upon the vielle, — 
and, at the age he was then of, touch'd it 
well enough for the purpose. His wife 
sung now and then a little to the tune, — 
then intermitted, — and join'd her old man 
again as their children and grand-children 
danced before them. 

It was not till the middle of the second 
dance, when, for some pauses in the move- 
ment wherein they all seem'd to look up, 
I fancied I could distinguish an elevation 
o\ spirit different from that which is the 
cause or the effect of simple jollity. In a 
word, I thought I beheld Religion mixing 
in the dance , — but, as I had never seen her 
so engaged, I should have look'd upon it 
now as one of the illusions of an imagina- 



tion which is eternally misleading me, had 
not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, 
said that this was their constant way ; and 
that all his life long he had made it a rule, 
after supper was over, to call out his family 
to dance and rejoice; believing, he said 
that a cheerful and contented mind was the 
best sort of thanks to Heaven that an illite- 
rate peasant could pay. — 

— Or a learned prelate either, said I. 



THE CASE OF DELICACY. 

When you have gain'd the top of Mount 
Taurira, you run presently down to Lyons ■ 
— adieu, then, to all rapid movements ! — 
'tis a journey of caution ; and it fares better 
with sentiments, not to be in a hurry with 
them : so I contracted with a voiturin to 
take his time with a couple of mules, and 
convey me in my own chaise safe to Turin, 
through Savoy. 

Poor, patient, quiet, honest people ! fear 
not; your poverty, the treasury of your 
simple virtues, will not be envied you by 
the world, nor will your valleys be invaded 
by it. — Nature ! in the midst of thy disor- 
ders, thou art still friendly to the scantiness 
thou hast created : with all thy great works 
about thee, little hast thou left to give, 
either to the scythe or to the sickle — but to 
that little thou grantest safety and protec- 
tion; and sweet are the dwellings which 
stand so shelter'd ! 

Let the wayworn traveller vent his 
complaints upon the sudden turns and dan- 
gers of your roads, your rocks, your preci- 
pices ; the difficulties of getting up, the 
horrors of getting down, mountains im 
practicable, — and cataracts, which roll 
down great stones from their summits, and 
block up his road. The peasants had been 
all day at work in removing a fragment of 
this kind between St. Michael and Madane : 
and, by the time my voiturin got to the 
place, it wanted full two hours of com- 
pleting, before a passage could any how 
be gain'd. There was nothing but to wait 
with patience ; — 'twas a wet and tempestu- 
ous night ; so that by the delay and that to- 
gether, the voiturin found himself obliged 
to put up five miles short of his stage, at a 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 325 

no way favorable to the nicety of our sen- 
sations: — if any thing- could have added 
to it, it was that the two beds were both of 
them so very small, as to cut us off from 
every idea of the lady and the maid lying 
tog-ether, which in either of them, could it 
have been feasible, my lying* beside them, 
though a thing not to be wish'd, yet there 
was nothing in it so terrible which the ima- 
gination might not have pass'd over without 
torment. 

As for the little room within, it offer'd 
little or no consolation to us : 'twas a damp, 
cold closet, with a half-dismantled window- 
shutter, and with a window which had 
neither glass nor oil-paper in it to keep out 
the tempest of the night. I did not en- 
deavor to stifle my cough when the lady 
gave a peep into it ; so it reduced the case 
in course to this alternative, — That the 
lady should sacrifice her health to her feel- 
ings, and take up with the closet herself, 
and abandon the bed next mine to her maid, 
— or, that the girl should take the closet, &c. 
The lady was a Piedmontese of about 
thirty, with a glow of health in her cheeks. 
The maid was a Lyonoise of twenty, and as 
brisk and lively a French girl as ever moved. 
There were difficulties every way, and the 
obstacle of the stone in the road, which 
brought us into the distress, great as it ap- 
peared whilst the peasants were removing 
it, was but a pebble to what lay in our way 
now. — I have only to add, that it did not 
lessen the weight which hung upon our 
the beds: and the oftener she cast her eyes j spirits, that we were both too delicate te 
that way, the more they return'd perplex'd. j communicate what we felt to each other 



little decern kind of an inn by the road- 
side. 

I forthwith took possession of my bed- 
chamber, got a good fire, order'd supper, 
and was thanking Heaven it was no worse, 

when a voiturin arrived with a lady in 
it, and her servant-maid. 

As there was no other bed-chamber in 
the hor«e, the hostess, without much nicety, 
led them into mine, telling them, as she 
usher'd them in, that there was nobody in 
it but an English gentleman ; — that there 
were two good beds in it, and a closet 
within the room which held another. The 
accent in which she spoke of this third bed, 
did not say much for it; — however, she 
said there were three beds, and but three 
people, — and she durst say the gentleman 
would do any thing to accommodate mat- 
ters. — I left not the lady a moment to make 
a conjecture about it, so instantly made a 
declaration that I would do any thing in 
my power. 

As this did not amount to an absolute 
surrender of my bed-chamber, I still felt 
myself so much the proprietor, as to have 
a right to do the honors of it ; — so I de- 
sired the lady to sit down, pressed her into 
the warmest seat, call'd for more wood, de- 
aired the hostess to enlarge the plan of the 
supper, and to favor us with the very best 
wine. 

The lady had scarce warm'd herself five 
minutes at the fire, before she began to 
turn her head back, and to give a look at 



— I felt for her — and for myself ; for in a 
few minutes, what by her looks, and the 
case itself, I found myself as much embar- 



upon the occasion. 

We sat down to supper ; and, had we not 
had more generous wine to it than a little 



rassed as it was possible the lady could be j inn in Savoy could have furnish'd, em 
herself. (tongues had been tied up till necessity her- 

That the beds we were to lie in were in I self had set them at liberty ; — but the lady 
one and the same room, was enough simply : having a few bottles of Burgundy in tier 
by itself to have excited all this; — but the voiture, sent down her fille di chambre for 
position of them (for they stood parallel, a couple of them ; so that by tne time sup- 
per was over, and we were left alone, we 
felt ourselves inspired with a strength of 
mind sufficient to talk, at least, without 
reserve, upon our situation. We turn'd it 
every way, and debated and considered it 
in all kinds of lights, in the course of a two 
hours' negotiation ; at the end of which the 
lorm'd a kind of recess for them that was articles were settled finally betwixt us. and 

28 



«md so very close to each other, as only to 
allow a space for a small wicker-chair be- 
twixt them) rendered the affair still more 
oppressive to us; — they were fixed up, 
moreover, near the fire, and the projection 
tX the chimney on one side ; and a large 
x;am which cross'd the room on the other, 



3V"* SENTIMENTAL JO RNEY, &c 

stipulated tor in form and manner of a treaty 
of peace, — and, I believe, with as much 
religion and good faith on both sides, as in 
any treaty which has yet had the honor of 
being- handed down to posterity. 

They were as follow : — 

First, As the right of the bed-chamber is 
in Monsieur, — and he thinking- the bed next 
to the fire to be the warmest, he insists upon 
the concession on the lady's side of taking 
up with it. 

Granted on the part of Madame ; with a 
proviso, That as the curtains of that bed 
are of a flimsy transparent cotton, and ap- 
pear likewise too scanty to draw close, that 
the fille de chambre shall fasten up the 
opening, either by corking-pins or needle 
and thread, in such manner as shall be 
deem'd a sufficient barrier on the side of 
Monsieur. 

2dly, It is required on the part of Mad- 
ame, that Monsieur shall lie the whole 
night through in his robe de chambre. 

Rejected : inasmuch as Monsieur is not 
worth a robe de chambre, he having nothing 
in his portmanteau but six shirts and a 
black silk pair of breeches. 

The mentioning the silk pair of breeches 
made an entire change of the article, — for 
the breeches were accepted as an equivalent 
for the robe de chambre ; and so it was 
stipulated and agreed upon, what I should 
lie in my black silk breeches all night. 

3dly. It was insisted upon, and stipu- 
lated for by the lady, that after Monsieur 
was got to bed, and the candle and fire ex- 
tinguished, that Monsieur should not speak 
one single word the whole night. 

Granted, provided Monsieur's saying his 
prayers might not be deem'd an infraction 
of the treaty. 

There was but one point forgot in this 
treaty, and that was the manner in which 
ti\?. lady and myself should be obliged to 



undress and get to bed ; — there was one 
way of doing it, and that I leave to the 
reader to devise, protesting as I do it, if it 
is not the most delicate in nature, — 'tis the 
fault of his own imagination, — against which 
this is not my first complaint. 

Now, when we were got to bed, whether 
it was the novelty of the situation, or what 
it was, I know not, but so it was, I could 
not shut my eyes ; I tried this side and that, 
and turn'd and turn'd again, till a full hour 
after midnight, when Nature and Patience 
both wearing out, — O my God ! said I. 

— You have broke the treaty, Monsieur, 
said the lady, who had no more sleep than 
myself. I begg'd a thousand pardons; but 
insisted it was no more than an ejaculation. 
— She maintain'd it was an entire infrac- 
tion of the treaty ; I maintained it was 
provided for in the clause of the third 
article. 

The lady would by no means give up the 
point, though she weaken'd her barrier by 
it; for, in the warmth of the dispute, I 
could hear two or three corking-pins fall 
out of the curtain to the ground. 

— Upon my word and honor, 'Madame, 
said I, stretching my arm out of bed by way 
of asseveration, — 

(I was going to have added, that I would 
not have trespass'd against the remotest 
idea of decorum for the world) — 

But the fille de chambre hearing there 
were words between us, and fearing that 
hostilities would ensue in course, had crept 
silently out of her closet; and it being 
totally dark, had stolen so close to our beds, 
that she had got herself into the narrow 
passage which separated them, and had 
advanced so far up as to be in a line be- 
twixt her mistress and me ; — 

So that when I stretch'd out my hand, ! 
caught hold of the fille de chambre's — 



END OF THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. 



&cttefs 



BY 



LAURENCE STERNE, A. M. 



LETTER I* 

TO MISS L . 

\ r ES ! I will steal from the world, and not 
a babbling tongue shall tell where I am, — 
Echo shall not so much as whisper my 
hiding place, — suffer thy imagination to 
paint it at a little sun-gilt cottage, on the side 
of a romantic hill; — dost thou think I will 
leave love and friendship behind me 1 No ! 
they shall be my companions in solitude, 
for they will sit down and rise up with me 

in the amiable form of my L . We will 

be as merry and as innocent as our first 
parents in Paradise, before the arch-fiend 
entered that undescribable scene. 

The kindest affections will have room to 
shoot and expand in our retirement, and 
produce such fruit as madness, and envy, 
and ambition, have always killed in the bud. 
— Let the human tempest and hurricane 
rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond 
the horizon of peace.— — My L. has seen 
a polyanthus blow in December, — some 
friendly wall has sheltered it from the 
biting wind. — No planetary influence shall 
reach us, but that which presides and cher- 
ishes the sweetest flowers. — God preserve 
us! how delightful this prospect in idea! 
We will build and we will plant in our own 
way, — simplicity shall not be tortured by 
art, — we will learn of Nature how to live, — 
she shall be our alchymist to mingle all the 
good of life into one salubrious draught. — 
The gloomy family of care and distrust shall 
be banished from our dwelling, guarded by 
thy kind and tutelary deity ; — we will sing 
our choral songs of gratitude, and rejoice to 
the end of our pilgrimage. 



* This, am! the throe subsequent letters, wore writ- 
ten by Mr. Sterne to his wife, while she resided in 
SutFordf^iie, before their marriage. 



Adieu, my L. Return to one a ho Ian 

guishes for thy society. 



L. STER.YE. 



LETTER [I. 



TO THE SAME. 



You bid me tell you, my dear L., how 1 

bore your departure for S , and whether 

the valley where D'Estella stands, retains 
still its looks, — or if I think the roses or 
jessamines smell as sweet, as when you 
left. it. — Alas ! every thing has now lost its 
relish and look! The hour you left D'Es- 
tella, I took to my bed. — I was worn out 
with fevers of all kinds, but most by that 
fever of the heart with which thou knowest 
well I have been wasting these two years 
— and shall continue wasting till you quit 

S . The good Miss S , from the 

forebodings of the best of hearts, think- 
ing I was ill, insisted upon my going to 
her. — What can be the cause, my dear 
L., that I have never been able to see the 
face of this mutual friend, but I feel myself 
rent to pieces] She made me stay an hour 
with her, and in that short space, I burst 
into tears a dozen different times — and in 
such affectionate gusts of passion, that she 
was constrained to leave the room, — and 
sympathize in her dressing-room. — I have 
been weeping for you both, said she, in a 
tone of the sweetest pity, — for poor L.'s 
heart, I have long known it — her anguish 
is as sharp as yours, — her heart as tender 
— her constancy as great, — her virtues as 
heroic: — Heaven brought you not together 
to be tormented. I could only answer her 
with a kind look, and a heavy sigh, — and 
returned home to your lodgings (which ! 
have hired till your return) to resign mv 
self to misery. — Fanny had pr^oared me » 



328 



LETTERS. 



supper, — she is all attention to me;-— but I 
sat over it with tears; a bitter sauce, my 
L., but I could eat with no other : — for the 
moment she began to spread my little table, 
my heart fainted within me. — One solitary 
plate, one Knife, one fork, one glass ! — I 
gave a thousand pensive penetrating looks 
at the chair thou hadst so often graced, in 
those quiet and sentimental repasts, — then 
laid down my knife and fork, and took out 
my handkerchief, and clapped it across my 
face, and wept like a child. — I do so this 
very moment, my L.; for, as I take up my 
pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face 
glows, and tears are trickling down upon 

the paper, as I trace the word L . O 

thou blessed in thyself, and in thy virtues, — 
blessed to all that know thee, — to me most 
so, because more do 1 know of thee than all 
thy sex. — This is the philtre, my L., by 
which thou hast charmed me, and by which 
thou wilt hold me thine, whilst virtue and 
faith hold this world together. — This, my 
friend, is the plain and simple magic by 

which I told Miss I have won a place 

in that heart of thine, on which I depend so 
satisfied, that time or distance, or change 
of every thing which might alarm the hearts 
of little men, create no uneasy suspense in 

mine. — Wast thou to stay in S these 

seven years, thy friend, though he would 
grieve, scorns to doubt or to be doubted ; — 
'tis the only exception where security is 
not the parent of danger. — I told you poor 
Fanny was all attention to me since your 
departure — contrives every day bringing in 
the name of L. She told me last night 
(upon giving me some hartshorn), she had 
observed my illness began the very day 

of your departure for S ; that I had 

never held up my head, had seldom or 
scarce ever smiled, had fled from all society, 
— that she verily believed I was broken- 
hearted, for she had never entered the 
room, or passed by the door, but she heard 
me sigh heavily, — that I neither eat, or 
slept, or took pleasure in any thing as be- 
fore; — judge then, my L., can the valley 
look so well, — or the roses and jessamines 
smeL so sweet as heretofore'? Ah me! — 
out adieu, — the vesper-bell calls me from 
hee to my (iod. 

L STERNE. 



LETTER TIL 

TO THE SAME. 

Before now my L. has lodged an Indict- 
ment against me in the high court of Friend- 
ship; — I plead guilty to '.he charge, and en- 
tirely submit to the mercy of that amiable 
tribunal. — Let this mitigate my punishment, 
if it will not expiate my transgression, — do 
not say that I shall offend again in the same 
manner, though a too easy pardon sometimes 
occasions a repetition of the same fault. — A 
miser says, Though I do no good with my 
money to-day, to-morrow shall be marked 
with some deed of beneficence. — The Lib- 
ertine says, Let me enjoy this week in for- 
bidden and luxurious pleasures, and the 
next I will dedicate to serious thought and 
reflection. — The Gamester says, Let me have 
one more chance with the dice, and I will 
never touch them more. — The Knave of 
every profession wishes to obtain but inde- 
pendency, and he will become an honest 
man. — The female Coquette triumphs in 
tormenting her enamorato, for fear, after 
marriage, he should not pity her. 

The apparition of the fifth instant (for 
letters may almost be called so) proved more 
welcome, as I did not expect it. Oh ! my 
L. thou art kind, indeed, to make an apolo- 
gy for me, and thou never wilt assuredly 
repent of one act of kindness — for being thy 
debtor, I will pay thee with interest. — Why 
does my L. complain of the desertion of 
friends 1 — Where does the human being live 
that will not join in this complaint ? — It is 
a common observation, and perhaps too true, 
that married people seldom extend their re- 
gards beyond their own fire-side. — There is 
such a thing as parsimony in esteem, as 
well as money — yet as one costs nothing, it 
might be bestowed with more liberality. 
We cannot gather grapes from thorns, so 
we must not expect kind attachments from 
persons who are wholly folded up in selfish 
schemes. I do not know whether I must 
despise or pity such characters — Nature 
never made an unkind creature — ill-usage, 
and bad habits, have deformed a fair and 
lovely creation. 

My L. ! — thou art surrounded by all the 
melancholy gloom of winter ! wert thou 
alone, the retirement would be agreeable 



LETTERS. 



329 



— disappointed ambition might envy such a 
retreat, and disappointed love would seek it 
out. — Crowded towns, and busy societies, 
may delight the unthinking- and gay — but 
solitude is the be-t nurse of wisdom. — Me- 
thinks I see my contemplative girl now in 
the garden, watching the gradual approach- 
es of spring. — Dost not thou mark with de- 
light the first vernal buds of the snow-drop 
and primrose, these early and welcome visit- 
ors, spring beneath thy feet. — Flora and 
Pomona already consider thee as their hand- 
maid, and a little time will load thee with 
their sweetest blessing. — The feathered 
race are all thy own, and with them, un- 
taught harmony will soon begin to cheer 
thy morning and evening walks. — Sweet 
as this may be, return — return — the birds 
of Yorkshire will tune their pipes, and sing 
as melodiously as those of Staffordshire. 

Adieu, my beloved L.; thine too much for 
my peace. 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER TV. 

TO THE SAME. 

I have offended her whom I so tenderly 
love ! — what could tempt me to it ! but if a 
beggar was to knock at thy gate, would'st 
thou not open the door, and be melted with 
compassion \ — I know thou would'st, for Pity 
has erected a temple in thy bosom. — Sweet- 
est and best of all human passions ! let thy 
web of tenderness cover the pensive form 
of affliction, and soften the darkest shades 
of misery ! — I have reconsidered this apolo- 
gy, and, alas ! what will it accomplish ] Ar- 
guments, however finely spun, can never 
change the nature of things — very true — 
so a truce with them. 

I have lost a very valuable friend by a 
sad accident, and what is worse, he has left 
a widow and five young chiidren to lament 
this sudden stroke. — If real usefulness and 
integrity of heart could have secured him 
from this, his friends would not now be 
mourning his untimely fate. — These dark 
and seemingly cruel dispensations of Provi- 
dence, often make the best of human hearts 
2K 



complain. — Who can paint the distress of 
an affectionate mother, made a widow in a 
moment, weeping in bitterness over a nu- 
merous, helpless, and fatherless offspring! 
— God ! these are thy chastisements, and 
require (hard task!) a pious acquiescence. 

Forgive me this digression, and allow me 
to drop a tear over a departed friend ; and, 
what is more excellent, an honest man. 
My L. ! thou wilt feel all that kindness can 

inspire in the death of . The event 

was sudden, and thy gentle spirit would be 
more alarmed on that account. — But, my L., 
thou hast less to lament, as old age was 
creeping on, and her period of doing good, 
and being useful, was nearly over. — At sixty 
years of age the tenement gets fast out of 
repair, and the lodger with anxiety thinks 
of a discharge. — In such a situation, the poet 
might well say, 

" The soul uneasy," &c. 

My L. talks of leaving the country — may 
a kind angel guide thy steps hither ! — Soli- 
tude at length grows tiresome. — Thou say- 
est thou wilt quit the place with regret — I 
think so too. — Does not something uneasy 
mingle with the very reflection of leaving 
it? It is like parting with an old friend, 
whose temper and company one has long 
been acquainted with — I think I see you 
looking twenty times a day at the house — 
almost counting every brick and pane of 
glass, and telling thern at the same time, 
with a sigh, you are going to leave them. — 
Oh, happy modification of matter ! they will 
remain insensible of thy loss. — But how wilt 
thou be able to part with thy garden 1 — The 
recollection of so many pleasing walks must 
have endeared it to you. The trees, the 
shrubs, the flowers, which thou reared with 
thy own hands — will they not droop and 
fade away sooner upon thy departure J — 
Who will be thy successor to nurse them 
in thy absence 1 — Thou wilt leave thy name 
upon the myrtle-tree. — If trees, and shrubs, 
and flowers, could compose an elegy, 1 
should expect a very plaintive one upon 
this subject. 

Adieu, adieu ! Believe me, ever, ever 
thine. 

L. STERN K 
28* 



330 



LETTER V. 

TO MRS. F . 

York, Tuesday, Nov. 19. 1759. 

Dear Madam, 

Your kind inquiries after my health, de- 
serve my best thanks. — What can give one 
more pleasure than the good wishes of those 
we value 1 — I am sorry you give so bad an 
account of your own health, but hope you 
will find benefit from tar-water — it has been 
of infinite service to me. — I suppose, my 
good lady, by what you say in your letter, 
" that I am busy writing an extraordinary 
" book," that your intelligence comes from 
York — the fountain-head of all chit-chat 
news — and — no matter. — Now for your de- 
sire of knowing the reason of my turning 
author"? why truly I am tired of employing 
my brains for other people's advantage. — 
'Tis a foolish sacrifice I have made for some 
years to an ungrateful person. — I depend 
much upon the candor of the public, but I 
shall not pick out a jury to try the merit of 
my book amongst ********, — and, till you 
read my Tristram, do not, like some people, 
condemn it. — Laugh I am sure you will at 
some passages. — I have hired a small house 
in the Minster Yard for my wife and daugh- 
ter — the latter is to begin dancing, &c. : if 
I cannot leave her a fortune, I will at least 
give her an education. — As I shall publish my 
works very soon, I shall be in town by March, 
and shall have the pleasure of meeting with 
you. — All your friends are well, and ever 
hold you in the same estimation that your 
sincere friend does. 

Adieu, dear lady : believe me, with every 
wish for your happiness, your most faith- 
•ul, &c, 

LAURENCE STERNE. 



LETTER VI. 

TO DR. ******. 

Jan. 30, 1760. 

Dear Sir, 
-De mortuis nil nisi bonum, is a maxim 
wrnch you have so often of late urged in 
conversation, and in your letters (but in 
your last especially,) with such seriousness 
%nd severity against me, as the supposed 
transgressor of the rule; — that you have 



LETTERS. 

made ne at length as serious and severe as 
yourself: — but that the humors you have 
stirred up might not work too potently 
within me, I have waited four days to cool 
myself, before I would set pen to paper to 
answer you, " de mortuis nil nisi bonum." 
I declare I have considered the wisdom and 
foundation of it over and over again, as 
dispassionately and charitably as a good 
Christian can, and, after all, I can find r.o- 
thing in it, or make more of it than a non- 
sensical lullaby of some nurse, put into 
Latin by some pedant to be chanted by some 
hypocrite to the end of the world, for the 
consolation of departing lechers. — 'Tis, 1 
own, Latin ; and I think that is all the 
weight it has — for, in plain English, 'tis a 
loose and futile position below a dispute- - 
'■'■you are not to speak any thing of the 
" dead but what is good." Why so 1 — Who 
says so? — neither reason nor scripture. — 
Inspired authors have done otherwise — and 
reason and common sense tell me, that if 
the characters of past ages and men are to 
be drawn at all, they are to be drawn like 
themselves ; that is, with their excellencies, 
and with their foibles — and it is as much a 
piece of justice to the world, and to virtue 
too, to do the one as the other. — The ruling 
passion, et les egaremens du carnr, are the 
very things which mark and distinguish a 
man's character; — in which I would as 
soon leave out a man's head as his hobby- 
horse. — However, if, like the poor devil of 
a painter, we must conform to this pious 
canon, de mortuis, &c. which I own has a 
spice of piety in the sound of it, and be 
obliged to paint both our angels pud our 
devils out of the same pot — I then infer 
that our Sydenhams, and Sangrad^s, our 
Lucretius, and Messalinas, our Somers, and 
our Bolingbrokes, are alike entitled to 
statues, and all the historians or satirists 
who have said otherwise since they de- 
parted this life, from Sallust to S , are 

guilty of the crimes you charge me with, 
" cowardice and injustice." 

But why cowardice? "because 'tis not 
" courage to attack a dead man who can't 
" defend himself." — But why do you doctors 
of the faculty attack such a one with your 
incision-knife 1 Oh ! for the good of the 
living. — 'Tis my plea. — But T have some- 
thing more to say in my behalt — and ii ia 



LETTERS. 



331 



this — I am not guilty of the charge — culingwhat I thought deserving of it--oi 
though defensible. I have not cut up Doc- of disservice to sound learning, &c. — how 
tor Kunastrokius at all. — I have just' I have succeeded, my book must show — 
scratched him — and that scarce skin-deep, and this I leave entirely to the world — bu. 
— 1 do him first all honor — speak of Kunas- not to that little world of your acquaintance, 
trokius as a great man — (be he whom he whose opinion and sentiments you call th%- 
will) and then most distantly hint at a droll general opinion of the best judges without 



foible in his character — and that not first 
reported (to the few who can even under- 
stand the hint) by me — but known before 
by every chamber-maid and footman within 
the bills of mortality — but Kunastrokius, 
you say, was a great man — 'tis that very 
circumstance which makes the pleasantry 
— for I could name at this instant a score 
of honest gentlemen who might have done 
the very thing which Kunastrokius did. and 
seen no joke in it at all — as to the failing 
of Kunastrokius, which you say can only 
be imputed to his friends as a misfortune — 
I see nothing like a misfortune in it to any 
friend or relation of Kunastrokius, that 
Kunastrokius upon occasion should sit with 
******* anc | ******* — j j mve p Ut th ese s t ars 

not to hurt your worship's delicacy. — If 
Kunastrokius after all is too sacred a char- 
acter to be even smiled at (which is all I 
have done,) he has had better luck than his 
betters. In the same page (without imputa- 
tion of cowardice) I have said as much of a 
man of twice his wisdom — and that is 
Solomon, of whom I have made the same 
remark, " That they were both great men 
" — and li'Ke all mortal men had each their 
" ruling passion." 

—The consolation you give me, " That 
" my book, however, will be read enough 
■ to answer my design of raising a tax upon 
"the public" — is very unconsolatory — to 

say nothing how very mortifying! by h n ! 

an author is worse treated than a com- 
mon ***** at this rate — " You will get a 
""penny by your sins, and that's enough" 
Upon this chapter let me comment. — That 
I proposed laying the world under contri- 
bution when I set pen to paper, — is what I 
own, and I suppose I may be allow'd to 
have that view in my head, in common with 
every other writer, to make my labor of 
advantage to myself. 

Do you not do the same 1 but I beg I may 
add, that whatever views I had of that kind, 
f had other views — the first of which was, 
the hopes of doing the world good, by ridi- 



exception, who all affirm (you say) that my 
book cannot be put into the hands of any 
woman of character. (I hope you except 
widows, doctor — for they are not all so 
squeamish, but I am told they are all really 
of my party, in return for some good offices 
done their interests in the 274th page oi 
my first volume.) But for the chaste mar 
ried, and chaste unmarried part of the sex 
— they must not read my book ! Heaven 
forbid the stock of chastity should be less- 
ened by the Life and Opinions of Tristram 
Shandy — yes, his Opinions — it would cer- 
tainly debauch 'em ! God take them under 
his protection in this fiery trial, and send 
us plenty of Duennas to watch the work- 
ings of their humors till they have safely 
got through the whole work. If this will 
not be sufficient, may we have plenty of 
Sangrados to pour in plenty of cold water 
till this terrible fermentation is over — as 
for the minimum in loculo, which you men- 
tion to me a second time, I fear you think 
me very poor, or in debt — I thank God, 
though I don't abound — that I have enough 
for a clean shirt every day — and a mutton 
chop — and my contentment, w 7 ith this, has 
thus far (and I hope ever will) put me 

above stooping an inch for it, even for 's 

estate. Curse on it, I like it not to that 
degree, nor envy (you may be sure) any 
man who kneels in the dirt for it — so that 
howsoever I may fall short of the ends pro- 
posed in commencing author — I enter this 
protest, first, that my end w T as honest ; and. 
secondly, that I wrote not to be fed, but to 
be famous. I am much obliged to Mr. 
Garrick for his very favorable opinion — but 
why, dear Sir, had he done better in finding 
fault with it than in commending it! to 
humble me ! an author is not so soon hum- 
bled as you imagine — no, but to make the 
book better by castrations — that is still suh 
judice, and I can assure you upon this chap- 
ter, that the very passages and descriptions 
you propose that I should sacrifice in :nv 
second edition, are what are best reiisM**' 



332 

by men of wit, and some others whom I 
esteem sound critics — so that, upon the 
whole, 1 am still kept up, if not above fear, 
at least above despair, and have seen enough 
to show me the folly of an attempt of cas- 
trating my book to the prudish humors of 
particulars. I believe the short-cut would 
be to publish this letter at the beginning- of 
the third volume, as an apology for the 
first and second. I was sorry to find a cen- 
sure upon the insincerity of some of my 
friends — I have no reason myself to re- 
proach any one man — my friends have con- 
tinued in the same opinions of my books 
which they first gave me of them — many 
indeed have thought better of 'em, by con- 
sidering them more, few worse. 
I am, Sir, 

Your humble servant, 

LAURENCE STERNE. 



now got home to my lodgings, 
play (you astonished me in it.) 
been unwrapping this self-same 



LETTER VII. 

TO DAVID GARRICK, ESQ. 

[About April, J7G0. 
Thursday, 11 o'clock— Night. 

Dear Sir, 
Twas for all the world like a cut across 
my finger with a sharp pen-knife. I saw 
the blood — gave it a suck — wrapt it up — 
and thought no more about it. 

But there is more goes to the healing of 
a wound than this comes to : — a wound (un- 
less it is a wound not worth talking of, — 
but, by the bye, mine is) must give you 
some pain after. Nature will take her own 
way with it — it must ferment — it must 
digest. 

The story you told me of Tristram's pre- 
tended tutor this morning — My letter by 
right should have set out with this sentence, 
and then the simile would not have kept 
you a moment in suspense. 

This vile story, I say — though T then saw 
l>oth how and where it wounded — I felt 
little from it at first — or, to speak more 
honestly (though it ruins my simile,) I felt 
a great deal of pain from it, but affected an 
air usual on such accidents, of less feeling 
.Uan 1 nad. ' 



LETTERS. 

I have 

since the 

and have 

wound of mine, and shaking my head over 

it this half-hour. 

What the devil ! — is there no one learn- 
ed blockhead throughout the many schools 
of misapplied science in the Christian 
world, to make a tutor of for my Tristram ! 
— ex quovis ligno nonjit — Are we so run 
out of stock, that there is no one lumber- 
headed, muddle-headed, mortar-headed, pud- 
ding-headed chap amongst our doctors? — 
Is there no one single wight of much read- 
ing and no learning, amongst the many chil- 
dren in my mother's nursery, who bid high 
for this charge — but I must disable my 
judgment by choosing a Warburton 1 Ven- 
geance ! have I so little concern for the 
honor of my hero ! Am I a wretch so void 
of sense, so bereft of feeling for the figure 
he is to make in story, that I should choose 
a preceptor to rob him of all the immor- 
tality I intended him ] O ! dear Mr. Garrick ! 

Malice is ingenious — unless where the 
excess of it outwits itself — I have two com- 
forts in this stroke of it ; the first is, that 
this one is partly of this kind ; and secondly, 
that it is one of the number of those which 
so unfairly brought poor Yorick to his grave. 
The report might draw blood of the author 
of Tristram Shandy — but could not harm 
such a man as the author of the Divine Le- 
gation — God bless him ! though (by the bye, 
and according to the natural course of de- 
scents) the blessing should come from him 
to me. 

Pray have you no interest, lateral or 
collateral, to get me introduced to his Lord- 
ship. 

Why do you ask 1 

My dear Sir, I have no claim to such an 
honor, but what arises from the honor and 
respect which, in the progress of my v/ork, 
will be shown the world I owe to so great 
a man. 

Whilst I am talking of owing— I wish, 
my dear Sir, that any body would tell you, 
how much I am indebted to you. I am de- 
termined never to do it myself, oi say mor& 
upon the subject than this, that I am yours, 

I . STERNE 



LETTERS. 



333 



LETTER VIII. 
— , Esa. 



TO S C 

May, 17G0. 

Dear Sir, 

I return you ten thousand thanks for 
the favor of your letter — and the account 
you give me of my wife and girl. I saw 

Mr. Ch y to-night at Ranelagh, who 

tells me you have inoculated my friend 
Bobby. I heartily wish him well through, 
and hope in God all goes right. 

On Monday we set out with a * grand 
retinue of Lord Rockingham's (in whose 
suite I move) for Windsor — they have con- 
tracted for fourteen hundred pounds for the 
dinner, to some general undertaker, of 
which the K. has bargained to pay one 
third. Lord George Sackville was last Sat- 
urday at the opera, some say with great 
effrontery, — others, with great dejection. 

I have little news to add. There is a 
shilling pamphlet f wrote against Tristram. 
I wish they would write a hundred such. 

Mrs. Sterne says her purse is light : will 
you, dear Sir, be so good as to pay her ten 
guineas, and I will reckon with you, when 
I have the pleasure of meeting you. My 
best compliments to Mrs. C. and all friends. 
Believe me, dear Sir, your obliged and 
r aithful 

LAU. STERNE. 



LETTER IX. 



TO THE SAME. 



May, 17fi0. 

Dear Sir, 
I this moment received the favor of your 
kind letter: — the letter in the Ladies' Maga- 
zine,! about me, was wrote by the noted 
Dr. Hill, who wrote the Inspector, and un- 
dertakes that magazine; — the people of 
York are very uncharitable to suppose any 
man so gross a beast as to pen such a char- 
acter of himself. — In this great town, no 
soul ever suspected it, for a thousand rea- 
sons ; — could they suppose I should be such 



* Prince Ferdinand, the Marquis of Rockingham, 
and Earl Temple, were installed Knights of the Gar- 
ter, on Tuesday, May 6th, 1760, at Windsor. 

t " The Clock-maker's outcry against the author of 
Tristram Shandy." 8vo. 

t The Royal Female Magazine, for April, 1760. 



a fool as to fall foul upon Dr. Wnrlmrton, 
my best friend, by representing him so 
weak a man, — or by telling such a lie of 
him, — as his giving me a purse, to buy off 
his tutorship for Tristram ! — or I should be 
fool enough to own I had taken his purse 
for that purpose ! 

You must know there is a quarrel between 

Dr. Hill and Dr. M y, who was the 

physician meant at Mr. Charles Stanhope's, 
and Dr. Hill has changed the place on pur- 
pose to give M y a lick. — Now that 

conversation (though perhaps true,) yet 
happened at another place,* and with an- 
other physician ; which I have contradicted 
in this city, for the honor of my friend 
M y : all which shows the absurdity of 



* As the truth of this anecdote is not denied, it may 
gratify curiosity to communicate it in Dr. Mill's own 
words.—" At the last dinner that the late Inst amiable 
"Charles Stanhope gave to genius, Yorick was pres- 
" ent. The good old man was vexed to see a pedantic 
"medicine-monger take the lead, and prevent that 
"pleasantry which good wit and good wine might 
" have occasioned, by a discourse in the unintelligible 
" language of his profession, concerning the difference 
'between the phrenitis and the paraphrenias, and 
" the concomitant categories of the mediastinum and 
" pleura. 

"Good-humored Yorick saw the sense of the master 
"of the feast, and fell into the cant and jargon of 
" physic, as if he had been one of Radcliffe's travellers. 
" ' The vulgar practice,' says he, ' savors loo much of 
"mechanical principles; the venerahle ancients were 
" all empirics, and the profession will never regain its 
" ancient credit, till practice falls into the old track 
"again. lam myself an instance; I caught cold by 
" leaning on a damp cushion, and, after sneezing and 
"sniveling a fortnight, it fell upon my breast. They 
" blooded me, blistered me, and gave me robs and bobs 
"and lohocks. and eclegmata; hut I grew worse; for 
" I was treated according to the exact rules of the 
"College. In short, from an inflammation it came to 
"an ADHESION, and all was over with me. They 
" advised me to go to Bristol, that I might not do them 
"the scandal of dying under their hands; and the 
" Bristol people for the same reason consigned me over 
"to Lisbon. Hut what do I? why I considered an 
" adhesion is. in plain English, only a sticking of two 
"things together, and that force enough would pull 
"them asunder. I bought a good ash-pole, and began 
" leaping over all the walls and ditches in the coun- 
" try. From the height of the pole 1 used to come soiuse 
"down upon my feet, like an ass. when he trampiea 
" upon a bull-dog: but.it did not do. At last— when 
" I had raised myself perpendicularly over a wall. I 
"used to fall exactly across the ridge of it upon the 
"side opposite to the adhesion. This tore it off at 
"once, and I am as you see. Come, till a glass to thr 
"memory of the empiric medicine.' If he had been 
" asked elsewhere about this disorder (for he reallv 
"had a consumptive disorder), he wouid have an- 
" swered. that he was cured by Huxham's decoction 
" of the bark, and elixir of vitriol "' 



334 



LETTERS. 



York credulity and nonsense. Besides, the! 
account is full of falsehoods, — first, with] 
regard to the place of my birth, which wasj 
at Clonmel, in Ireland, — the story of a hun- 
dred pounds to Mrs. W ,* not true, or 

of a pension promised ; the merit of which 
I disclaimed, — and indeed there are so 
many other things so untrue, and unlikely 
to come from me, that the worst enemy I 
have here never had a suspicion, — and, to 
end all, Dr. Hill owns the paper. 

I shall be down before May is out ; — I 
preach before the judges on Sunday ; — my 
Sermons come out on Thursday after; — 
and I purpose, the Monday, at furthest, 
after that, to set out for York; — I have 
bought a pair of horses for that purpose : — 

my best respects to your Lady . 

I am, Dear Sir, 
Your most obliged and faithful 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. I beg pardon for this hasty scrawl, j 
having just come from a concert where the | 
D. of York performed. — I have received! 
great notice from him, and last week had! 
the honor of supping with him. 



LETTER X. 

TO DR. WARBURTON, BISHOP OF 
GLOUCESTER 

York, June 9, 1760. 

My Lord, 
Not knowing where to send two sets of 
my Sermons, I could think of no better ex- 
pedient than to order them into Mr. Ber- 
renger's hands, who has promised me that 
he will wait upon your Lordship with them, 
the first moment he hears you are in town. 
The truest and humblest thanks I return to 
your Lordship, for the generosity of your 
protection, and advice to me ; by making a 
good use of the one, I will hope to deserve 
the other: I wish your Lordship all the 
health and happiness in this world, for I am 

Your Lordship's 

Most obliged and 

Most grateful Servant, 

L. STERNE. 



* The widow of Mr. Slernes predecessor in the 
living of Coxwould. 



P. S. I am just sitting down to g)on 
with Tristram, &c. — the scribblers use me 
ill, but they have used my betters much 
worse, for which may God forgive them. 



LETTER XL 

TO MY WITTY WIDOW, MRS. F . 

Coxwould, Aug. 3, 1760. 

Madam, 

When a man's brains are as dry as a 
squeez'd orange,— and he feels he has no 
more conceit in him than a mallet, 'tis in 
vain to think of sitting down, and writing a 
letter to a lady of your wit, unless in the 
honest John-Trot style of yours of the \bth 
instant came safe to hand, <S(-c., which, by 
the bye, looks like a letter of business; and 
you know very well, from the first letter I 
had the honor to write to you, I am a man 
of no business at all. This vile plight 1 
found my genius in was the reason I have 

told Mr. , I would not write to you till 

the next post, — hoping by that time to get 
some small recruit, at least of vivacity, if 
not wit, to set out with ; — but upon second 
thoughts, thinking a bad letter in season, — 
to be better than a good one out of it, — this 
scrawl is the consequence, which if you 
will burn the moment you get it — I promise 
to send you a fine set essay in the style of 
your female epistolizers, cut and trimm'd at 
all points. — God defend me from such, who 
never yet knew what it was to say or write 
one premeditated word in my whole life; 
— for this reason I send you this with pleas- 
ure, because wrote with the careless irregu- 
larity of an easy heart. Who told you, 

Garrick wrote the medley for Beard 1 — 
'Twas wrote in his house, however, and be- 
fore I left town. — I deny it, — I was not lopt 
two days before I left town. — I was lost all 
the time I was there, and never found till I 
got to this Shandy-castle of mine. — Next 
winter I intend to sojourn amongst you with 
more decorum, and will neither be lost or 
found anywhere. 

Now I wish to God, I was at your elbow, 
— I have just finished one volume of Shan- 
dy, and I want to read it to some one who I 
know can taste and relish humor ; — this, by 
the way, is a little impudent in me, — fci I 



LETTERS. 



335 



lake the thing for granted, which their high 
mightinesses the world have yet to deter- 
mine. — but I mean no such thing, — I could 
wish only to have your opinion; — shall I. 
in truth, give you mine ? — 1 dare not, — but 
I will; provided you keep it to yourself; — 
know then, that I think there is more laugh- 
able humor, — with an equal degree of Cer- 
vantic satire, if not more, — than in the last; 
— but we are bad judges of the merit of our 
children. 

I return you a thousand thanks for your 
friendly congratulations upon my habitation, 
— and I will take care, you shall never wish 
me but well, for I am, Madam, 
With great esteem and truth, 

Your most obliged, 

L. STERNE. 
P. S. I have wrote this so vilely and so 
precipitately, I fear you must carry it to a 
decipherer. — I beg you'll do me the honor 
to write, — otherwise you draw me in, in- 
stead of Mr. drawing you into a scrape; 

— for I should sorrow to have a taste of so 
agreeable a correspondent, — and no more. 

Adieu. 



LETTER XII. 



TO S- 



C , ESQ. 



London, Christmas Day, 17C0. 

My Dear Friend, 
I have been in such a continual hurry 
since the moment I arrived here, — what 
with my books, and what with visitors and 
visitings, that it was not in my power soon- 
er to sit down and acknowledge the favor 
of your obliging leUer; and to thank you 



for the most friendly motives which led you 

to write it. — I am not much in pain upon J Colonel from Germany, that out of two bat- 



what I will; and besides, rnusl expect to 
have a party against me of many hundreds. 
— who either do not, or will not laugh.-- 
'Tis enough if I divide the world ; — at least, 
I will rest contented with it. — I wish you 
was here to see what changes of looks and 
political reasoning have taken place in evcrv 
company and coffee-house since last year. 
We shall be soon Prussians and Anti-Prus- 
sians, B sand Anti-B s; and those 

distinctions will just do as well as Whig 
and Tory, — and, for aught I know, serve 
the same ends. The King seems re- 
solved to bring all things back to their ori- 
ginal principles, and to stop the torrent of 
corruption and laziness. He rises every 
morning at six, to do business, — ride*; out 
at eight to a minute, — returns at nine, to 
give himself up to his people.— By persisting, 
'tis thought he will oblige his ministers and 
dependants to dispatch affairs with him many 
hours sooner than of late ; — and 'tis much 
to be questioned whether they will not be 
enabled to wait upon him sooner, by being 
freed from long levees of their own, and 
applications; which will in all likelihood be 
transferred from them directly to himself, — 
the present system being to remove that 
phalanx of great people which stood betwixt 
the throne and the subjects, and suffer them 
to have immediate access without the inter- 
vention of a cabal — (this is the language of 
others) : — however, the King gives every 
thing himself, knows every thing, and 
weighs every thing maturely, and then is 
inflexible. — This puts old stagers off their 
game. — How it will end, we are all in the 
dark. 

'Tis feared the war is quite over in Ger- 
many. Never was known such havoc 
amongst troops. — I was told yesterday by a 



what gives my kind friends at Stillington 
so much on the chapter of Noses; because, 
as the principal satire throughout that part 
is levelled at those learned blockheads who, 
in all ages, have wasted their time and 
much learning upon points as foolish, — 
it shifts off the idea of what you fear, to an- 
other point :- 
good; — 'twill 
with all :— no, no ! I shall be attacked and j 



talions of nine hundred men, to which he 
belonged, but seventy-one are left ! — Prince 
Ferdinand has sent word, 'tis said, that he 
must have forty thousand men directly to 
take the field, — and with provisions for 
them too ; for he can but subsist ihem for a 
fortnight. — I hope this will find you all got 
and 'tis thought here very to York. — I beg my compliments to the 
pass muster, — 1 mean not amiable Mrs. Croft, &c. &c. 

Though I purposed going first to Golden 



pelted, either from cellars or garrets, write Square, yet Fate has thus long disposed o 



330 LETTERS. 

me , — so I Lave never been able to set a foot 
towards that quarter. 

I am, dear Sir, 

Yours affectionately, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XIII. 

TO THE SAME. 

[About Jan. 1, 1761. 

My Dear Dear Sir, 
I have just time to acknowledge the 
favor of yours; but not to get the two 
prints you mention, which shall be sent you 
by the next post. I have bought them, and 
lent them to Miss Gilbert, but will assuredly 
send for them, and inclose them to you. I 
will take care to get your pictures well 
copied, and at a moderate price : and if I 
can be of further use, I beseech you to em- 
ploy me ; and, from time to time, will send 
you an account of whatever may be worth 
transmitting. — The stream now sets in 
strong against the German war. Loud com- 
plaints of making a trade 

of the war, &c. — much expected from Ld. 
Granby's evidence to these matters, who is 
expected every hour. The king wins every 
day upon the people, shows himself much 
at the play (but at no opera) ; rides out with 
his brothers every morning, half an hour 
after seven till nine ; returns with them ; 
spends an hour with them at breakfast and 
chat, and then sits down to business. I 
never dined at home once since I arrived : 
and fourteen dinners deep engaged just 
now ; and fear matters will be worse with 
me in that point than better. As to the 
main points in view, at which you hint, all 
\ can say is, that I see my way, and, unless 
< >ld Nick throws the dice, shall, in due time, 
come off winner. — Tristram will be out the 
20th. — There is a great rout made about 
him before he enters the stage: — whether 
tins will be of use or no, I can't say. — Some 
wits of the first magnitude here, both as to 
wit and station, engage me success ; — time 
vvii' show 

Adieu. 



LETT BR XIV. 



TO THE SAME. 



March, 1761. 



Dear Sir, 
Since I had the favor of your obliging 
letter, nothing has happened, or been said 
one day, which has not been contradicted 
the next : so having little certain to write, 
I have forborne writing at all, in hopes 
every day of something worth filling up a 
letter. We had the greatest expectations 
yesterday that ever were raised, of a pitched 
battle in the House of Commons; wherein 
Mr. Pitt was to have entered and thrown 
down the gauntlet, in defence of the Ger- 
man war. — There never was so full a house : 
— the gallery full to the top ; — I was there 
all the day, — when lo! a political fit of the 
gout seized the great combatant : — he enter- 
ed not the lists. — Beckford got up, and 
begged the House, as he saw not his Right 
Honorable friend there, to put off the debate. 
— It could not be done : so Beckford rose 
up, and made a most long, passionate in- 
coherent speech, in defence of the Ger- 
manic war, — but very severe upon the un- 
frugal manner it was carried on ; — in which 
he addressed himself principally to the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer ; and laid on 
him terribly. — It seems the chancery of 
Hanover had laid out 350,000 pounds on ac- 
count, and brought in our Treasury debt- 
or ; — and the grand debate was, for an 
honest examination of the particulars of 
this extravagant account, and for vouchers 
to authenticate it. — Legge answered Beck- 
ford very rationally and coolly. — Lord N. 
spoke long. — Sir F. Dashwood maintained, 
the German war was most pernicious. — Mr. 

C , of Surrey, spoke well against the 

account, with some others. — L. Barrington 
at last got up, and spoke half an hour with 
great plainness and temper, — explained a 
great many hidden springs relating to these 
accounts, in favor of the late King, and told 
two or three conversations relative to these 
expenses; — which cast great honor upon 
the King's character. This was with regard 
to the money the King had secretly fur- 
nished out of his pocket, to lessen the ac- 
count of the Hanover-score brought us to 
, discharge. 






LETTERS 

Beckford and Barrington abused all who 
sought for peace, and joined in the cry for 
it; and Beckford added, that the reasons of 
wishing a peace now, were the same as the 



337 



peace of Utrecht; that the people behind 
the curtain could not both maintain the war 
and their places too; so were for making 
another sacrifice of the nation to their own 
interests. After all, the cry for a peace is 
so general, that it will certainly end in one. 
— Now for myself. 

One -half of the town abuse my book as 
bitterly as the other half cry it up to the 
skies : the best is, they abuse it and buy it, 
and at such a rate, that we are going on 
with a second edition as fast as possible. 

I am going down, for a day or two, with 
Mr. Spencer, to Wimbleton. On Wednes- 
day there is to be a grand assembly at Lady 

N . I have inquired everywhere about 

Stephen's affair ; and can hear nothing. My 
friend Mr. Charles Townshend, will be now 
Secretary of War ;* he bid me wish him joy 
of it, though not in possession. I will ask 
him; and depend, my most worthy friend, 
that you shall not be ignorant of what I 
learn from him. Believe me ever, ever, 
Yours, 



LETTER XV. 



TO THE SAME. 



April, 1761. 

My Dear Sir, 

A strain which I got in my wrist by a 

terrible fall, prevented my acknowledging 

the favor of your obliging letter. I went 

yesterday morning to breakfast with Mr. 

V , who is a kind of right-hand man to 

the Secretary, on purpose to inquire about 
the propriety, or feasibility, of doing what 
you wish me; — and he has told me an an- 
ecdote which, had you been here, would, I 
Jiink, have made it wiser to have deferred 
peaking about the affair a month hence 
Inn now. It is this: — You must know 
that the numbers of officers who have left 
their regiments in Germany for the pleas- 



* Fie was appointed S«cretar> 
March, 1761. 

2S 



it War the<Mth of 



ures of the town, have been long a topic 
of merriment; as you see them in St. 
James's Coffee-house, and the Park, everj 
hour, inquiring, open mouth, how things 
go on in Germany, and what news, — when 
they should have been there to have fur- 
nished news themselves: — but the worst 
part has been, that many of them have left 
their brother officers on their duty, and in 
all the fatigues of it, and have come with 
no end but to make friends, to be put un- 
fairly over the heads of those who were 
left risking their lives. — In this attempt, 
there have been some but too successful, 
wlii"h has justly raised ill-blood and com- 
plaints from the officers who staid behind : 
the upshot has been, that they have every 
soul been ordered off: and woe be to him 
('tis said) who shall be found listening! 
Now, just to mention our friend's case 
whilst this cry is on foot, I think, would be 
doing more hurt than good : but, if you 
think otherwise, I will go with all my 
heart, and mention it to Mr. Townshend ; 
for, to do more, I am too inconsiderable a 
person to pretend to. — You made me and 
my friends here very merry with the ac- 
counts current at York, of my being forbid 
the court; — but they do not consider what 
a considerable person they make of me, 
when they suppose either my going, or my 
not going there, is a point that ever enters 
the King's head; — and, for those about 
him, I have the honor either to stand so 
personally well known to them, or to be so 
well represented by those of the first rank, 
as to fear no accident of that kind. 

I thank God (B 's excepted) I have 

never yet made a friend or connexion 1 
have forfeited, or done aught to forfeit ; — 
but, on the contrary, my true character is 
better understood ; and where I had one 
friend last year who did me honor, I have 
three now. — If my enemies knew that, by 
this rage of abuse and ill-will, they were 
effectually serving the interests both of my- 
self and works, they would be more quiet ; 
— but it has been the fate of my betters, 
who have found, that the way to fame is, 
like the way to Heaven, — through much 
tribulation ; — and, till I shall have the honor 
to be as much maltreated as Rabelais and 
Swift, were, I must continue humble- — ur 
29 



338 



LETTERS. 



I have not filled u 
their persecutions. 

The court is turning- topsy-turvy. Lord 
Bute le premier ;* — Lord Talbot to be 
Groom of the Chambers,! in room of the 

T). of R d ;— Lord Halifax to Ireland ;{ 

— Sir F. Dashwood in Talbot's place; — 
Pitt seems unmoved; — a peace inevitable; 
— stocks rise ; — the peers this moment kiss- 
ing hands, &c. &c. (this week may be 
christened the kiss-hands week) for a hun- 
dred changes will happen in consequence 
of these. Pray present my compliments to 
Mrs. C. and all friends, and believe me, 
with the greatest fidelity, 

Your ever obliged 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. Is it not strange that Lord Talbot 
should have power to remove the Duke of 
R &.} 

Pray, when you have read this, send the 
ijiews to Mrs. Sterne. 



the measure of half ! glauber-salts could not have hurt: — as it 



LETTER XVI. 



TO J- 



Esa. 



Coxwould, July 28, 1761. 



Dear TI , 

I sympathized for, or with you, on the 
detail you give me of your late agitations, 
— and would willingly have taken my 
horse, and trotted to the oracle to have in- 
quired into the etymology of all your suf- 
ferings, had I not been assured, that all 
that evacuation of bilious matter, with all 
that abdominal motion attending it (both 
which are equal to a month's purgation 
.and exercise) will have left you better than 

it found you. — Need one go to D , to 

be told that all kind of mild (mark, I am 
going to talk more foolishly than your 
-apothecary) opening, saponaceous, dirty- 
-hirt, and washing liquors are proper for 
vou ; and, consequently, all styptical pota- 
lions death and destruction. — If you had 
not shut up your gall-ducts by these, the 



* Lord Bute was appointed Secretary of State on 
tin; 25th of March 1761. 

* ,j6rd Talbot was appointed Steward of the House- 
hold on the same day. 

f Lord Halifax was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of 
Ireland on the 20th of March, 176 



was, 'twas like a match to the gunpowder, 
by raising a fresh combustion, as all physic 
does at first; so that you have been let off, 
— nitre, brimstone, and charcoal (which .is 
blackness itself) all at one blast. — 'Twas 
well the piece did not burst; for I think it 
underwent great violence, and, as it is 
proof, will, I hope, do much service in this 
militating world. — *Panty is mistaken ; 1 
quarrel with no one. — There was that cox- 
comb of in the house, who lost' temper 

with me for no other reason upon earth but 
that I could not fall down and worship a 
brazen image of learning and eloquence 
which he set up, to the persecution of all 
true believers. — I sat down upon his altar, 
and whistled in the time of his divine ser- 
vice, — and broke down his carved work, 

and kicked his incense-pot to the D ; 

so he retreated, sed non sine ftlle in corde 
suo. — I have wrote a clerum, whether 1 
shall take my doctor's degrees or not. — 1 
am much in doubt, but I trow not. — I go 
on with Tristram. — I have bought seven 
hundred books at a purchase, dog-cheap, — 
and many good ; — and I have been a week 
getting them set up in my best room here : 
— Why do not you transport yours to town ] 
but I talk like a fool. — This will just catch 
you at your spaw. I wish you incolumem 
apud Londinum. — Do you go there for 
good and all, — or ill 1 — I am, dear cousin, % 
Yours affectionately, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XVII. 

TO THE SAME. 

Coxwould [about August] 1761. 

Dear H , 

I rejoice you are in London ; — rest you 
there in peace: — here 'tis the Devil. — You 
was a godd prophet. — I wish myself back 
again, as. you told me I should; — but not 
because a thin, death-doing, pestiferous, 
north-east wind blows in a line directly 
from Crazy Castle turret full upon me, m 
this cuckoldy retreat (for I value the north- 
east wind and all its powers not a straw) — 
but the transition from rapid motion to ab 



* The Rev. Mr. k— 



LETTERS. 

solute rest was too violent. — I should have 
walked about the streets of York ten days, 
as a proper medium to have passed through, 
before I entered upon my rest. — I staid but 
a moment, and 1 have been here but a few, 
to satisfy me I have not managed my mise- 
ries like a wise man ; — and if God, for my 
consolation under them, had not poured 
forth the spirit of Shandeism into me, which 
will not suffer me to think two moments 
upon any grave subject. I would else just 
now lie down and die, — die; — and yet, in 
half an hour's time, I'll lay a guinea, I shall 
be as merry as a monkey, — and as mis- 
chievous too, and forget it all ; — so that this 
is but a copy of the present train running 
across my brain. — And so you think this 
cursed stupid, — but that, my dear H — — , 
depends much upon the quota horn of your 
shabby clock; if the pointer of it is in any 
quarter between ten in the morning or four 
in the afternoon, — I give it up ; — or, if the 
day is obscured by dark engendering clouds 
of either wet or dry weather, lam still lost. 
— But who knows but it may be five, — and 
the day as fine a day as ever shone upon 
the earth since the destruction of Sodom ; 
— and, perad venture, your Honor may have 
got a good hearty dinner to-day, and eat and 
drunk your intellectuals into a placidulish 
and a blandulish amalgama, — to bear non- 
sense : — so much for that. 

'Tis as cold and churlish just now, as (if 
God had not pleased it to be so) it ought to 
have been in bleak December; and there- 
fore I am glad you are where you are, and 
where (I repeat it again) I wish I was also. 
— Curse of poverty, and absence from those 
we love ! — they are two great evils which 
embitter all things ; — and yet, with the first, 
I am not haunted much. — As to matrimony, 
1 should be a beast to rail at it, for my wife 
is easy, — but the world is not; — and, had I 
staid from her a second longer, it would 
have been a burning shame, else she de- 
clares herself happier without one ; but not 
in anger is this declaration made, — but in 
pure sober good sense built on sound ex- 
perience. — She hopes you will be able to 
strike a bargain for me before this time 
twelve-month, to lead a bear round Europe: 
and, from this hope from you, I verily be- 
hove it is, that you are so high in her favor 
at present.- -She swears you are a fellow 



33S» 

of wit, though humorous : n funny, jolly soul, 
though somewhat splenetic; and (bating 
the love of women) as honest as gold ; — 
how do you like the sh::ile \ — Oh, Lord! 
now you are going to Ranelagh to-night, 
and I am sitting, sorrowful as the prophet 
was, when the voice cried out to him, and 
said, " What doest thou here, Elijah V — 
'Tis well the spirit does not make the same 
at Coxwould ; — for, unless for the few sheep 
left me to take care of in this wilderness, I 
might as well, nay better, be at Mecca. — 
When we find we can, by a shifting of places, 
run away from ourselves, what think you 
of a jaunt there, before we finally pay a 
visit to the Vale of Jehosaphat 1 — as ill a 
fame as we have, I trust 1 shall one day or 
other see you face to face. — So tell the two 
Colonels, if they love good company, to live 
righteously and soberly as you do, and then 
they will have no doubts or dangers within 
or without them. — Present my best and 
warmest wishes to them, and advise the 
eldest to prop up his spirits, and get a rich 
Dowager before the conclusion of the peace: 
— why will not the advice suit both par 
nobile Jratrum ? 

To-morrow morning (if Heaven permit) 
I begin the fifth volume* of Shandy: — I 
care not a curse for the critics. — I'll load 
my vehicle with what goods he sends me, 
and they may take 'em off my hands, or let 
them alone. — I am very valorous : — and 'ti» 
in proportion as we retire from the world, 
and see it in its true dimensions, that we 
despise it. — No bad rant ! — God above bless 
you ! You know I am 

Your affectionate cousin, 

LAURENCE STERNE. 

What few remain of the Demoniacs, 
greet; — and write me a letter, if you are 
able, as foolish as this. 



LETTER XVIIL 

TO LADY . 

Coxwould, Sept. 21, 17bi. 
I return to my new habitation, fully de- 
termined to write as hard as can be, and 
thank you most cordially, my dear lady, fi»r 
your letter of congratulation upon my Lord 



* Alluding to the first editiow. 



340 LETTERS 

Fauconberg's having 1 presented me with the 
curacy of this place, — though your con- 
gratulation comes somewhat of the latest, 
as I have been possessed of it some time. 
— I hope I have been of some service to 
his Lordship; and he has sufficiently re- 
quited me. — 'Tis seventy guineas a year 
in my pocket, though worth a hundred ; — 
but it obliges me to have a curate to offici- 
ate at Sutton and Stillington. — 'Tis within 
a mile of his Lordship's seat and park. 'Tis 
a very agreeable ride out in the chaise I 
purchased for my wife. — Lyd has a poney, 
which she delights in. — Whilst they take 
these diversions, I am scribbling away at my 
Tristram. These two volumes are, I think, 
the best. — I shall write as long as I live; 
'tis, in fact, my hobby-horse, and so much am 
I delighted with my uncle Toby's imaginary 
character, that I am become an enthusiast. 
— My Lydia helps to copy for me ; — and 
my wife knits, and listens as I read her 
chapters. — The coronation of his Majesty 
(whom God preserve !) has cost me the 
value of an ox, which is to be roasted whole 



in the middle of the town ; and my parish- sire, — I found him reading Tristram. — This 



ioners will, I suppose, be very merry upon 
the occasion. — You will then be in town, — 
and feast your eyes with a sight which, 'tis 
to be hoped, will not be in either of our powers 
to see again ; — for, in point of age, we have 
about twenty years the start of his majesty. 
— And now, my dear friend, I must finish 
this, — and, with every wish for your hap- 
piness, conclude myself your most sincere 
well-wisher and friend, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XIX. 

TO DAVID GARRICK, ESQ. 

Paris, Jan. 31, 1762. 

My Dear Friend, 
Think not, because I have been a fortnight 
in this metropolis without writing to you, 
that therefore I have not had you and Mrs. 
Garrick a hundred times in my head and 
heart. — Heart ! yes, yes, say you ; — but I 
must not waste paper in badinage this post, 
whitever I do the next. Well ! here I am, 
my friend, as mucn improved in my health, 
tor the time, as ever your friendship could 
wish, or. at least, your faith give credit to. 



— By the bye, I am somewhat worse in my 
intellectuals ; for my head is turned round 
with what I see, and the unexpected honors 
I have met with here. Tristram was al- 
most as much known here as in London, at 
least among your men of condition and learn- 
ing, and has got me introduced into so many 
circles ('tis comme a Londres.) I have just 
now a fortnight's dinners and suppers upon 
my hands. — My application to the Count de 
Choiseul goes on swimmingly ; for not only 
Mr. Telletiere (who, by the bye, sends ten 
thousand civilities to you and Mrs. Garrick) 
has undertaken my affair, but the Count de 
Limbourgh.— -The Baron d'Holbach has offer- 
ed any security for the inoffensiveness of my 
behavior in France : — 'tis more, you rogue, 
than you will do ! — This Baron is one of the 
most learned noblemen here, the g'reat pro- 
tector of wits, and the Scavans, who are no 
wits ; — keeps open house three days a week. 
— His house is now, as yours was to me, my 
own. — He lives at great expense. — 'Twas 
an odd incident when I was introduced to 
the Count de Bissie, which I was at his de- 



grandee does me great honors, and gives 
me leave to go a private way through his 
apartments into the Palais Royal, to view 
the Duke of Orleans's collections, every day 
I have time. — I have been at the doctors of 
Sorbonne. — I hope in a fortnight to break 
through, or rather from, the delights of this 
place, which, in the Scavoir Vivre, exceeds 
all the places, I believe, in this section of 
the globe. 

I am going, when this letter is wrote, 
with Mr. Fox and Mr. Macartney to Ver- 
sailles. The next morning I wait upon 
Mons. Titon, in company with Mr. Macart- 
ney, who is known to him, to deliver your 
commands. — I have bought you the pam- 
phlet upon theatrical, or rather tragical de- 
clamation. I have bought another in verse, 
worth reading; and you will receive them, 
with what I can pick up this week, by a 
servant of Mr. Hodges, whom he is sending 
back to England. 

I was last night with Mr. Fox to see Made- 
moiselle Clairon, in Iphigene; — she is ex- 
tremely great : — would to God you had one 
or two like her ! What a luxury, to see you 
with one of such powers in the same inter- 
esting scene! — but 'tis too much, — Ah! 



LETTERS. 



34! 



Preville! thou art Mercury himself. — By 
rirtue of taking a couple of boxes, we have 
bespoke, this week, The Frenchman in Lon- 
don, in which Preville is to send uf home 
to supper all h<> }>])</,- -J tr.arci "-b <ut fifteen 
or sixteen English of diPtinctionu who are 
now here, and live wp!i with each other. 

I am under gr<;a', obligations to Mr. Pitt, 
who has behaved in every respect to me like 
a man of good-breeding and good-nature. — 
In a post or two I will write again. — Foley 
is an honvst soul. — I could write six volumes 
of what nas passed comically in this great 
scene, smce these last fourteen days ; but 
more of this hereafter. — We are all going 
into mourning ; neither you nor Mrs. Gar- 
? >ck would know me, if you met me in my 
surmise. Dless you both ! Service to Mrs. 

Dennis. Adieu, adieu ! 

L. S. 



LETTER XX. 

TO LADY D . 

London,* Feb. 1. 1762. 

Your Ladyship's kind inquiries after my 
nealth are indeed kind, and of a piece with 
the rest of your character. Indeed I am 
very ill, having broke a vessel in my lungs. 
— Hard writing in the summer, together 
with preaching, which I have not strength 
for, is ever fata! to me ; — but I cannot avoid 
the latter yet; and the former is too pleasu- 
rable to be given up. — I believe I shall try if 
the south of France will not be of service 
to me : his G. of Y. has most humanely given 
me the permission for a year or two. — I shall 
set off with great hopes of its efficacy, and 
shall write to my wife and daughter to come 
and join me at Paris, else my stay could not 
be so long. — " Le Fevre's story has beguiled 
" your Ladyship of your tears ;" and the 
thought of the accusing spirit flying up to 
Heaven's chancery with the oath, you are 
kind enough to say, is sublime. My friend 
Mr. Garrick thinks so too, and I am most 
vain of his approbation. Your Ladyship's 
opinion adds not a little to my vanity. 

I wish I had time to take a little excur- 
sion to Bath, were it only to thank you for jail. It is a tragical nuisance in all compo- 

I nies as it is ; and, was it not for some sudden 

» This letter, though dated from London, was evi- ' starts an( ] dashes of Shandeism, which now 
Jently written at Paris , _ 



all the obliging things you say in your let* 
ter: — but 'tis impossible : — accept, at least, 
my warmest thanks. — If I could tempt my 

friend Mr. H to come to France, I should 

be truly happy. — If I can be of any service 
to you at Paris, command him who is, and 
ever will be, 

Your Ladyship's faithful 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XXL 

TO DAVID GARRICK, ESQ. 

Paris, March 19, 1762. 

Dear Garrick, 
This will be put into your hands by Dr. 
Shippen, a physician who has been here 
some time with Miss Poyntz, and is this 
moment setting off for your metropolis: so 
I snatch the opportunity of writing to you 
and my kind friend Mrs. Garrick. — I see 
nothing like her here, and yet I have been 
introduced to one half of their best goddesn- 
es; and, in a month more, shall be admitted 
to the shrines of the other half; — but I nei- 
ther worship nor fall (much) upon my knees 
before them ; but, on the contrary, have con- 
verted many unto Shandeism ; — for be it 
known, I Shandy it away fifty times more 
than I ever was wont, talk more nonsense 
than ever you heard me talk in your days, 
and to all sorts of people. Qui le diable 
est eel komme-ld, said Choiseul, t'other day, 
ce Chevalier Shandy. — You'll think me as 
vain as a Devil, was I to tell you the rest 
of the dialogue : — whether the bearer knows 
it or not, I know not. — 'Twill serve up after 
supper, in Southampton-street, amongst 
other small dishes, after the fatigues of Rich- 
ard the Third. — O God ! they have nothing 
here which gives the nerves so smart a blow 
as those great characters in the hands of Gar- 
rick ! — but I forgot I am writing to the man 
himself — The Devil take (as ne will) these 
transports of enthusiasm ! Apropos: — The 
whole city of* Paris is bewitch'' d with the 
comic opera; and if it was not for the affan 
of the Jesuits, which takes up one half of 
our talk, the comic opera would have ii 



342 LETTERS 

and then either break the thread, or entan- 
gle it so, that the Devil himself would be 
puzzled in winding- it off, — I should die a 
martyr: — this, by the way, I never will. 

I send you over some of these comic 
operas by the bearer, with the Sallon, a 
satire. — The French comedy, I seldom visit 
it; — they act scarce any thing- but trage- 
dies; — and the Clairon is great, and Made- 
moiselle Dumesnil, in some places, still 
greater than ner ; — yet I cannot bear 
preaching: I fancy I g-ot a surfeit of it in 
my young-er days. — There is a tragedy to 
be damned to-night ; peace be with it, and 
the gentle brain which made it ! I have ten 
thousand things to tell you I cannot write. 
I do a thousand things which cut no figure 
but in the doing ; — and, as in London, I 
have the honor of having done and said a 
thousand things I never did or dreamt of, — 
and yet I dream abundantly. — If the Devil 
stood behind me in the shape of a courier, 
I could not write faster than I do, having 
five letters more to dispatch by the same 
gentleman ; he is going into another sec- 
tion of the globe ; and when he has seen 
you, he will depart in peace. 

The Duke of Orleans has suffered my 
portrait to be added to the number of some 
odd men in his collection ; and a gentleman, 
who lives with him, has taken it most ex- 
pressively at full length. I purpose to ob- 
tain an etching of it, and to send it you. 
Your prayer for me, of rosy healthy is heard. 
If I stay here for three or four months, I 
shall return more than reinstated. — My 
love to Mrs, Garrick. 

I am, my dear Garrick, 

Your most humble servant, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XXII. 

TO THE SAME. 

Paris, April 10, 1762. 

My Dear Garrick, 
I sinatch the occasion of Mr. Wilcox (the 
•ate Bishop of Rochester's son) leaving this 
piace for England, to write to you : and I 
inclose it to Hall, who will put it into your 
UAnd. Dossibly behind the scenes. I hear 
no news of you or your empire ; I would 



have said kingdom, but here every thing 
is hyperbolized; — and if a woman is but 
simply pleased, — 'tis Je suis charme ; — and 
if she is charmed, 'tis nothing less than that 
she is ravi-sh'd ; — and when ravisn'd (which 
may happen), there is nothing left for her 
but to fly to the other world for a metaphor, 
and swear, Qu'elle etoit tout extasite ; — 
which mode of speaking is, by the bye, here 
creeping into use ; and there is scarce a 
woman who understands the bon ton, but is 
seven times in a day in downright ecstacy ; 
— that is, the Devil's in her, — by a small 
mistake of one word for the other. — Now. 
where am I got ? 

I have been these two days reading a 
tragedy, given me by a lady of talent to 
read ; and conjecture if it would do for you • 
— 'Tis from the plan of Diderot ; and possi- 
bly half a translation of it : — The Natural 
Son, or the Triumph of Virtue, in five acts. 
— It has too much sentiment in it, (at least 
for me), the speeches too long, and savor 
too much of preaching ; — this may be a 
second reason it is not to my taste. — 'Tis 
all love, love, love, throughout, without 
much separation in the character j so I fear 
it would not do for your stage, and perhaps 
for the very reasons which recommend it to 
a French one. — After a vile suspension of 
three weeks, we are beginning with our 
comedies and operas again : — yours, I hear, 
never flourished more; — here, the comic 
actors were never so low; — the tragedians 
hold up their heads, in all senses. I have 
known one little man support the theatrical 
world, like a David Atlas, upon his shoul- 
ders; but Preville can't do half as much 
here, though Mademoiselle Clairon stands 
by him, and sets her back to his: — she is 
very great, however, and highly improved 
since you saw her ; — she also supports hen 
dignity at table, and has her public day 
every Thursday, when she gives to eat (as 
they say here) to all that are hungry and 
dry. 

You are much talked of here and much 
expected, as soon as the peace will let you, 
— These two last days you have happened 
to engross the whole conversation at two 
great houses where I was at dinner. — 'Tis 
the greatest problem in nature, in this me- 
ridian, that one and the same man should 
possess such tragic and comic powers, and 



LETTERS. 



343 



m such an equilibrio, as to divide the world 
for which of the two Nature intended him. 

Crebillion has made a convention with 
ne, which, if he is not too lazy, will be no 
bad persiflage : — As soon as I get to Tou- 
louse, he has agreed to write me an expos- 
tulatory letter upon the indecorums of T. 
Shandy ; — which is to be answered by re- 
crimination upon the liberties in his own 
works : — these are to be printed together, — 
Crebillion against Sterne; — Sterne against 
Crebillion : — the copy to be sold, and the 
money equally divided. — This is good Swiss- 
policy. 

I am recovered greatly ; and if T could 
spend one whole winter at Toulouse, I 
should be fortified, in my inner man, be- 
yond all danger of relapsing. — A sad asth- 
ma my daughter has been martyr'd with 
these three winters (but mostly this last), 
makes it, I fear, necessary she should try 
the last remedy of a warmer and softer air ; 
so I am going this week to Versailles, to 
wait upon Count Choiseul to solicit pass- 
ports for them. — If this system takes place, 
they join me here; — and, after a month's 
stay, we all decamp for the south of France : 
— if not, I shall see you in June next. Mr. 
Fox and Mr. Macartney having left Paris, 
I live altogether in French families. — I 
laugh till I cry, and, in the same tender 
moments, cry till I laugh. I Shandy it 
more than ever; and verily do believe, that 
Dy mere Shandeism, sublimated by a laugh- 
ter-loving people, I fence as much against 
infirmities as I do by the benefit of air and 
climate. Adieu, dear Garrick : — present 
ten thousand of my best respects and wishes 
to and for my friend Mrs. Garrick ; — had 
she been last night upon the Thuilleries, 
she would have annihilated a thousand 
French goddesses in one single turn. 
I am, most truly, 

My dear friend, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XXIII. 

^O MRS. STERNE, YORK. 

Paris, May 16, 17C2. 

My Dear, 
It is a thousand to one that this reaches 
fou before you have set out; — however, I 
uke the chance.— You wiU receive one 



wrote last night, the moment you get ti 
Mr. E. and to wish you joy of your arrival 
in town. — To that letter, which you will 
find in town, I have nothing to add that I 
can think on, for I have almost drain'd my 
brains dry upon the subject. For God's 
sake, rise early and gallop away in the cool , 
— and always see that you have not forgot 
your baggage in changing post-chaises. — ■ 
You will find good tea upon the road from 
York to Dover ; — only bring a little to carry 
you from Calais to Paris. — Give the custom- 
house officers what I told you ; — at Calais 
give more, if you have much Scotch snuff; 
— but as tobacco is good here, you had best 
bring a Scotch-mill and make it yourself; 
that is, order your valet to manufacture it ; 
— 'twill keep him out of mischief. — I would 
advise you to take three days in coming up, 
for fear of heating yourselves. — See that 
they do not give you a bad vehicle, when a 
better is in the yard; but you will look 
sharp. — Drink small Rhenish, to keep you 
cool (that is, if you like it). Live well, and 
deny yourselves nothing your hearts wish. 
So God in Heaven prosper and go along 
with you ! — kiss my Lydia, and believe me 
both affectionately, 

Yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XXIV. 



TO THE SAME. 



Paris, May 31, 1702. 

My Dear, 
There have no mails arrived here till 
this morning, for three posts ; so I expected, 
with great impatience, a letter from you 
and Lydia; — and lo! it is arrived. You 
are as busy as Throp's wife; and by tbe 
time you receive this, you will be busier 
still. — I have exhausted all my ideas about 
your journey, — and what is needful for you 
to do before and during it; — so I write onlv 
to tell you I am well. — Mr. Colebrooka, 
the minister of Swisserland's secretary. I 
got this morning to write a letter for yon 
to the governor of the custom-house office 
at Calais : it shall be sent you next post. — 
You must be cautious about Scotch snmi: 
— take half a pound in your pocket, and 



344 LETTERS. 

make Lyd do the same. 'Tis well 1 bought 
you a chaise; — there is no getting one in 
Paris now, but at an enormous price, — for 
they are all sent to the army ; and such a 
one as yours we have not been able to 
match for forty guineas, for a friend of mine 
who is going from hence to Italy. — The 
weather was never known to have set in so 
hot as it has done the latter end of this 
month ; so he and his party are to get into 
his chaise by four in the morning, and 
travel till nine, — and not stir out again till 
eix; — but I hope this severe heat will abate 
by the time you come here : — however, I 
beg of you once more to take special care 
of heating your blood in travelling, and 
come tout . doucement when you find the 
heat too much. I shall look impatiently 
for intelligence from you, and hope to hear 
all goes well ; that you conquer all difficul- 
ties, that you have received your passport, 
my picture, &c. Write, and tell me some- 
thing of every thing. I long to see you 
both, you may be assured, my dear wife 
and child, after so long a separation ; — and 
write me a line directly, that I may have 
all the notice you can give me, — that I may 
have apartments ready and fit for you when 
you arrive. — For my own part, I shall con- 
tinue writing to you a fortnight longer. — 
Present my respects to all friends. — You 
have bid Mr. C. get my visitations at P. 
done for me, &c. &c. If any offers are 
made about the inclosure at Rascal, they 
must be inclosed to me ; — nothing that is 
fairly proposed shall stand still on my score. 
Do all for the best, as He who guides all 
things will, I hope, do for us ! — so Heaven 
preserve you both ! — believe me 

Your affectionate 

L. STERNE. 

Love to my Lydia. — I have bought her 
a gold watch, to present to her when she 
comes. 



LETTER XXV. 

TO THE SAME. 

Paris, June 7, 1762. 

My Dear 

I keep mv promise, and write to you 

again. — I am sorry the bureau must be 

onen'd for the deeds ; — but you will see it 

done --I imagine you are convinced of the 



necessity of bringing three hundred pound* 
in your pocket. — If you consider, Lyoia 
must have two slight negligees: — you will 
want a new gown or two. — As for painted 
linens, buy them in town — they will b*> 
more admired because English than French. 
— Mrs. H. writes me word that I am mis- 
taken about buying silk cheaper at Toulouse 
than Paris ; that she advises you to buy what 
you want here, — where they are very beau- 
tiful and cheap, as well as blonds, gauzes. 
&c. — These, I say, will all cost you sixtv 
guineas; — and you must have them; — for 
in this country nothing must be spared for 
the back : — and if you dine on an onion, 
and lie in a garret seven stories high, you 
must not betray it in your clothes: accord- 
ing to which, you are well or ill look'd 
on. — When we are got to Toulouse, we 
must begin to turn the penny ; and we may 
(if you do not game much) live very chea]i 
— I think that expression will divert you ; 
— and now, God knows, I have not a wish 
but for your health, comfort, and safe arri- 
val here. — Write to me every other post, 
that I may know how you go on. — You 
will be in raptures with your chariot: — Mr. 
R. a gentleman of fortune, who is going to 
Italy, and has seen it, has offered me thirty 
guineas for rny bargain. You will wonder 
all the way, how I am to find room in it for 
a third. To ease you of this wonder, 'tis 
by what the coachmakers here call a Cave : 
which is a second bottom added to that you 
set your feet upon, which lets the person 
(who sits over-against you) down with his 
knees to your ancles; and by which you 
have all more room, — and, what is more, 
less heat, — because his head does not inter- 
cept the fore-glass, — little or nothing. — 
Lyd and I will enjoy this by turns; some- 
times I shall take a bidet (a little post-horse) 
and scamper before : — at other times I shall 
sit in fresco upon the arm-chair without 
doors ! and one way or other will do very 
well. — I am under infinite obligations to 
Mr. Thornhill, for accommodating me thus ; 
and so genteelly, for 'tis like making a 

present of it. — Mr. T will send you an 

order to receive it at Calais : — and now, my 
dear girls, have I forgot any thing 1 
Adieu ! adieu ! 

Yours, most affectionately, 

L. STERNE 



A week cr ten days wi" 



LETTERS. 

enable yon to i self. - 



345 

forget the watch-chains , 



see every thi: 
stay to rest yr 



ig ', — and jC 
^r benes. 



long you must 



LETTER XXVI. 

TO THE SAME. 

Paris, June 14, 17G2. 

My Dearest, 
Having an opportunity of writing by a 
'riend who is setting out this morning for 
London, I write again, in case the two last 
letters I have wrote this week to you, 
should be detained by contrary winds at 
Calais. — I have wrote to Mr. E , bv the 



Do not 

bring a couple for a gentleman's watch 
likewise: we shall lie under great obliga 
tions to the Abbe M., and must make hirr 
such a small acknowledgment; — according 
to my way of flourishing, 'twill be a pres- 
ent worth a kingdom to him. — They have 
bad pins and vile needles here; — bring 
for yourself, and some for presents ; — as also 
a strong bottle-screw for whatever scrub 
we may hire as butler, coachman, &c. to 
uncork us our Frontiniac. — You will find 
a letter for you at the Lyon d'Argent. — 
Send for your chaise into the court-yard, 
and see all is right. — Buy a chain at Calais, 
strong enough not to be cut off; and let 
your portmanteau be tied on the fore-part 



same hand, to thank him for his kindness; of vour chaise, for fear of a dog's trick :- 



to you, in the handsomest manner I could ; 
— and have told him, his good heart, and 
his wife's, have made them overlook the 
trouble of having you at his house; but 
that if he takes you apartments near him, 
tiiey will have occasion still enough left to 
sLow their friendship to us. — I have begged 
hi:n to assist you, and stand by you as if he 
was in my place, with regard to the sale 
of the Shandys ; — and then the copyright. 
— Mark to keep these things distinct in 
yojr held : — but. Becket, I have ever found 
to be a man of probity, and, I dare say, 
yoc. wiS have very little trouble in finishing 
ma, ten with him : and I would rather wish 
you to treat with him than with another 
man : — but whoever buys the fifth and sixth 
volun^s of the Shandys, must have the 
nay-ssv of the seventh and eighth.* — I 
wish when you come here, in case the 
weather is too hot to travel, you could think 
it ple»nant to go to the Spa for four or six 
week"?, where we could live for half the 
money we should spend at Paris: — after 
that, we should take the sweetest season of 
the vintage to go to the south of France ; 
but we will put our heads together, and you 
shall just do as you please in this, and in 
every thing which depends on me, — for I 
am a being perfectly contented when others 
are pleased ; — to bear and forbear will ever 
be my maxim, — only I fear the heats 
through a journey of five hundred miles 
or you and my Lydia, more than for my- 



so God bless you both, and remember me tr 
my Lydia. 

I am yours affectionately, 

L. STERNE 



* Alluding to the first edition. 

2 T 



LETTER XXVII. 

TO THE SAME. 

Paris, June 17, 1?'.'>2. 

My Dearest, 
Probably you will receive another letter 
with this, by the same post; — if so, read 
this the last. — It will be the last you can 
possibly receive at York ; for I hope it 
will catch you just as you are upon the 
wing: — if that should happen, I suppose, in 
course, you have executed the contents of it. 
in all things which relate to pecuniary 
matters; and when these are settled to 
your mind, you will have got through your 
last difficulty : — every thing else will be a 
step of pleasure ; and by the time you have 
got half a dozen stages, you will set up 
your pipes and sing Te Deum together, as 

you whisk it along. — Desire Mr. C to 

send me a proper letter of attorney by you* 
he will receive it back by return of post. 
You have done every thing well with re- 
gard to our Sutton and Stillington affairs, 
and left things in the best channel. — If I 
was not sure you must have long since got 
my picture, garnets, &c. I would write 

and scold Mr. T abominably, — he pu - . 

them in Becket's hands, to be forwarded by 
the stage-coach to you, as soon as he got 



3 46 



LETTERS. 



to town. — I long to hear from you, and that 
all my letters and things are come safe to 
you, and then you will say I have not been 
a bad lad ; for you will find I have been 
writing continually, as I wished you to do. 
— Bring your silver coffee-pot : 'twill serve 
both to give water, lemonade, and or- 
jead ; — to say nothing of coffee and choco- 
late, which, by the bye, is both cheap and 
good at Toulouse, like other things. — I had 
like to have forgot a most necessary thing: 
— there are no copper tea-kettles to be had 
in France : and we shall find such a thing 
the most comfortable utensil in the house : 
— buy a good strong one, which will hold 
two quarts: — a dish of tea will be of com- 
fort to us in our journey south. — I have a 
bronze tea-pot, which we will carry also : 
— as china cannot be brought over from 
England, we must make up a villanous 
party-colored tea equipage, to regale our- 
selves, and our English friends, whilst we 
are at Toulouse. — I hope you have got your 
bill from Becket. — There is a good-natured 
k ; nd of a trader I have just heard of, at Mr. 
Foley's, who they think will be coming off 
from England to France, with horses, the 
latter end of June. He happened to come 
over with a lady, who is sister to Mr. Fo- 
ley's partner ; and I have got her to write 
a letter to him in London, this post, to beg 

he will seek you out at Mr. E 's ; and, 

in case a cartel-ship does not go off before 
he goes, to take you under his care. He 
was infinitely friendly, in the same office, 
last year, to the lady who now writes to him, 
and nursed her on shipboard, and defended 
her by land with great good-will. — Do not 
say I forget you, or whatever can be con- 
ducive to your ease of mind in this journey. 
— I wish I was with you, to do these offices 
myself, and to strew roses on your way; 
but I shall have time and occasion to show 
you I am not wanting. — Now, my dears, 
once more pluck up your spirits, — trust in 
God,— in me, — and in yourselves; — with 
this, was you put to it, you would encounter 
all these difficulties ten times told. — Write j 
instantly, and tell me you triumph over all j Before I got half-way, the poor animal drop- 



still. — As I will not have F.'s share of the 
books, you will inform him so. — Give mv 
love to Mr. Fothergill, and to those true 
friends which envy has spared me; — and 
for the rest, laissez passer. — You will find 
I speak French tolerably ; but I only wish 
to be understood. — You will soon speak 
better ; a month's play with a French De- 
moiselle will make Lyd chatter like a mag- 
pie. Mrs. understood not a word of it 

when she got here ; and writes me word she 
begins to prate apace: — you will do the 
same in a fortnight. — Dear Bess, I have a 
thousand wishes ; but have a hope for every 
one of them ; — you shall chant the same 
jubilate, my dears : so God bless you ! My 
duty to Lydia, which implies my love too. 
Adieu. Believe me 

Your affectionate 

L. STERNE 

Memorandum. — Bring watch-chains, tea- 
kettle, knives, cookery-book, &c. 

You will smile at this last article — so 
adieu. — At Dover, the Cross Keys; at Calais 
the Lyon d'Argent, — the master, a Turk 
in grain. 



LETTER XXVIII. 

TO LADY D. 

Paris, July 9. 1762. 

I will not send your Ladyship the trifles 
you bid me purchase, without a line. I am 
very well pleased with Paris. Indeed I 
meet with so many civilities amongst the 
people here, that I must sing their praises : 
— the French have a great deal of urbanity 
in their composition ; and to stay a little 
time amongst them will be agreeable. — 1 
splutter French so as to be understood ; — 
but I have had a droll adventure here, in 
which my Latin was of some service to 
me ; — I had hired a chaise and a horse to 
go about seven miles into the country, but 
Shandean-like, did not take notice that the 
horse was almost dead when I took him. — 



fears ; tell me Lydia is better, and a help- 
mate to you. — You say she grows like me : 
let her snow me she does so in her con- 



ped down dead ; — so I was forced to appear 
before the police, and began to tell my 
story in French, which was that the poor 



'emutof small dangers, and fighting against beast had to do with a worse oeast than 
too apprehensions o<" them, which is better , himself, namely, his master, who had driven 



LETTERS. 



34' 



not when or how to get it to our friend. — 
[ wish it had been better worth a paragraph. 
If there is any thing we can buy or pro- 
cure for you here (intelligence included, 
you have a right to command me, — for 1 
am yours, with my wife and girl's kind 
love to you and Mrs. E. 

L. STERNE. 



him all the day before (Jehu-like) — and | to have left it behind us at Paris, we Knew 
that he had neither had corn or hay, there- 
fore I was not to pay for the horse ; — but I 
might as well have whistled as have spoke 
French ; and I believe my Latin was equal 
to my uncle Toby's Lillibullero, — being 
not understood, because of its purity; but 
by dint of words 1 forced my judge to do 
me justice : — no common thing, by the way, 
in France. My wife and daughter are ar- 
rived : the latter does nothing but look out 
of the window, and complain of the torment 
of being frizzled. — I wish she may ever 
remain a child of Nature: — I hate children 
of Art. 

1 hope this will find your Ladyship well; 
— and that you will be kind enough to di- 
rect to me at Toulouse ; which place I shall 
set out for very soon. 

I am, with truth and sincerity, 
Your Ladyship's 

Most faithful 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XXIX. 



TO MR. E. 



Paris, July 12, 170-2. 

Dear Sir, 
My wife and daughter arrived here safe 
and sound on Thursday, and are in high 
raptures with the speed and pleasantness 
of their journey ; and, particularly, of all 
they see and meet with here. But in their 
journey from York to Paris, nothing has 
given them a more sensible and lasting 
pleasure than the marks of kindness they 
received from you and Mrs. E. — The 
friendship, good-will, and politeness of my 
two friends, I never doubted to me or mine ; 
and I return you both all a grateful man is 
capable of, which is merely my thanks. — I 
have taken, however, the liberty of sending 
an Indian taffety, which Mrs. E. must do 
me the honor to wear for my wife's sake ; 
who would have got it made up, but that 
Mr. Stanhope, the Consul of Algiers, who 
sets off to-morrow morning for London, 
has been so kind (I mean his lady) as to 
take charge of it; and we had but just time 
to procure it: and had we missed \hat op- 
portunity, as we should have been obliged 



LETTER XXX. 



TO J- 



H — s — , Esa. 

Toulouse, August 12, 17(32. 



My Dear H. 

By the time you have got to the end of 
this long letter, you will perceive that I 
have not been able to answer your last till 
now : — I have had the intention of doing it 
almost as often as my prayers in my head : 
— 'tis thus we use our best friends. — What 
an infamous story is that you have told me ! 
— After some little remarks on it, the rest 
of my letter will go on like silk. **** — is a 
good-natured old easy fool, and has been 
deceived by the most artful of her sex ; and 
she must have abundance of impudence and 
charlatanry, to have carried on such a farce. 
I pity the old man for being taken in for so 
much money; — a man of sense I should 
have laughed at. — My wife saw her when 
in town, and she had not the appearance of 
poverty ; but when she wants to melt ****'s 
heart, she puts her gold-watch and diamond 
rings in her drawer. — But he might have 
been aware of her. — I could not have been 
mistaken in her character; — and 'tis odd 
she should talk of her wealth to one, and 
tell another the reverse ; — so good-night to 
her. — About a week or ten days before my 
wife arrived at Paris, I had the same acci- 
dent I had at Cambridge, of breaking a 
vessel in my lungs. It happened in the 
night, — and I bled the bed full ; and finding 
in the morning 1 was likely to bleed to 
death, I sent immediately for a surgeon to 
bleed me at both arms: — this saved me, 
and with lying speechless three days, I re- 
covered upon my back in bed ; the breach 
healed, and, in a week after, I got out— 
This, with my weakness and hurrying 
about, made me think it high time to has'c 



348 



LETTERS. 



to Toulouse. We have had four months of 
such heuts, that the oldest Frenchman 
never remembers the like: — 'twas as hot 
as Nebuchadnezzar's oven, and never has 
relaxed one hour: — in the height of this, 
'twas our destiny (or rather destruction) 
to set out by way of Lyons, Montpellier, 
&c. to shorten, I trow, our sufferings. — 
Good God ! — but 'tis over ; — and here I am 
in my own house, quite settled by M — 's 
aid and good-natured offices; for which I 
owe him more than I can express, or know 
how to pay at present. 'Tis in the pretti- 
est situation in Toulouse, with near two 
acres of garden; — the house too good by 
half for us, — well furnished ; for which I 
pay thirty pounds a year. — I have got a 
good cook, — my wife a decent femme de 
chambre, — and a good-looking laquais. 
The Abbe has planned our expenses, and 
set us in such a train, we cannot easily go 

wrong ; — though, by the bye, the D 1 is 

seldom found sleeping under a hedge. Mr. 
Trotter dined with me the day before I 
left Paris. — I took care to see all executed 
according to your directions; but Trotter, I 
dare say, by this, has wrote to you. I made 
him happy beyond expression with your 
Crazy Tales ; and more so with its frontis- 
piece. — I am in spirits, writing a crazy 
chapter, with my face turned towards thy 
turret. — "Tis now I wish all warmer cli- 
mates, countries, and every thing else, at 

, that separates me from our paternal 

seat ; — ce sera Id oil reposera ma cendre, — 
et ce sera Id oit mon cousin viendra repon- 
dre les pleurs dues a notre amitie. — I am 
taking asses' milk three times a day, and 
cows' milk as often. I long to see thy face 
again once more. — Greet the Colonel kindly 
in my name ; and thank him cordially from 
me, for his many civilities to Madame and 
Mademoiselle Shandy at York, who send 
ail due acknowledgments. The humor is 
over for France and Frenchmen ; but that 
is not enough for your affectionate cousin, 

L. s. 

(A year will tire us all out, I trow} but, 
thank Heaven, the post brings me a letter 
from my Anthony. — I felicitate you upon 
what Messrs. the Reviewers allow you; 
they have too much judgment themselves 
rot to allow you what you are actually 
possessed of, ' ; talents, wit, and humor." — 



Well, write on, my dear cousin, and be 
guided by thy own fancy. — Oh ! how I envy 
you all at Crazy Castle ! — I could like to 
spend a month with vou ; and should return 
back again for the vintage. — I honor the 
man that has given the world an idea of our 
parental seat ; 'tis well done. — I look at it 
ten times a day with a quando tc aspiciam? 
— Now farewell! — remember me to my 
beloved Colonel ; — greet Panty most lov- 
ingly on my behalf; and, if Mrs. C and 

Miss C , &.c. are at G — , greet them 

likewise with a holy kiss; — so God bless 
you! 

L. S. 



LETTER XXXI. 

TO MR. FOLEY, AT PARIS. 

Toulouse, Aug. 14, 1762. 

My Dear Foley, 
After many turnings (alias digressions) 
to say nothing of downright overthrows, 
stops, and delays, we have arrived in three 
weeks at Toulouse, and are now settled in 
our house with servants. &c. about us, and 
look as composed as if we had been here 
seven years. — In our journey we sufferea 
so much from the heats, it gives me pain to 
remember it: — I never saw a cloud from 
Paris to Nismes half as broad as a twenty- 
four sols piece. — Good God ! we wer& 
toasted, roasted, grill'd, stew'd, and carbon- 
aded on one side or other all the way ; — 
and being all done enough (assez cuits) in 
the day, we were eat up at night by bugs, 
and other unswept-out vermin; the legal 
inhabitants (if length of possession gives 
right) of every inn we lay at. — Can you 
conceive a worse accident than that in such 
a journey, in the hottest day and hour of it, 
four miles from either tree or shrub which 
could cast a shade of the size of one of Eve's 
fig-leaves, — that we should break a hind- 
wheel into ten thousand pieces, and be 
obliged in consequence to sit five hours on 
a gravelly road, without one drop of water, 
or possibility of getting any ! — To mend the 
matter, my two postilions were two dough- 
hearted fools, and fell a-crying. — Nothing 
was to fee done ! By Heaven, quoth I, pull- 
ing off my coat and waistcoat, sonethmg 



311) 



shall be done, for I'll thrash you both within 
an inch of your lives, — and then make you 
take each of you a horse, and ride like two 
devils to the next post for a cart to carry 
my baggage, and a wheel to carry our- 
selves!— Our luggage weighed ten quin- 
tals. — 'Twas the fair of Baucaire : — all the 
world was going or returning : — we were 
ask'd by every soul who pass'd by us, If we 
were going to the fair of Baucaire ?— No 
wonder, quoth I, we have goods enough ! 
Vous avez raison, mes amis. 

Well, here we are, after all, my dear 
friend,— and most deliriously placed at the 
extremity of the town, in an excellent 
house, well furnish'd, and elegant beyond 
any thing I look'd for.— Tis built in the 
form of a hotel, with a pretty court towards 
the town ; — and behind, the best garden in 
Toulouse, laid out in serpentine walks ; and 
so large, that the company in our quarter 
usually come to walk there in the evening, 
for which they have my consent: — "the 
" more the merrier." The house consists 
of a good salle a manger above stairs, join 



LETTERS. 

friend, and believe that T love you as much 
from inclination as reason, for 

I am most truly yours, 

J.. STERNE. 

My wife and girl join in compliments t«_ 
you. — My best respects to my worthy Baron 
d'Holbach, and all that society.— Remember 
me to my friend Mr. Panchaud. 



LETTER XXXII. 

T0 J H S , esq. 

Toulouse, Oct. 19, 1762. 



My Dear H- 
I received your letter yesterday ;— so ' 
has been travelling from Crazy Castle to 
Toulouse full eighteen days:— if I had no- 
thing to stop me, I would engage to set out 
this morning, and knock at Crazy Castle 
gates in three days less time;— by which 
time, I should find you and the Colonel, 
Panty, &c. all alone ;— the season I most 
- wish and like to be with you.— I rejoice 
mgr to the very great salle a compagnie as from my heart, down to my reins, that von 



large as the Baron d'Holbach's; three hand 
some bed-chambers, with dressing-rooms to 
them ; — below stairs, two very good rooms 
for myself; one to study in, the other to 
see company. — I have moreover cellars 

round the court, and all other offices. Of 

the same landlord, I have bargained to have 
the use of a country-house, which he has 
tsvo miles out of town; so that myself and 
all my family have nothing more to do than 
to take our hats and remove from the one 
to the other.— My landlord is moreover to 
keep the gardens in order:— and what do 
you think I am to pay for all this? Neither 
more nor less than thirty pounds a year 



have snatch'd so many happy and sunshiny 
days out of the hands of the blue devils.— 
If we live to meet and join our forces as 
heretofore, we will give these gentry a 
drubbing, and turn them for ever out of their 
usurped citadel : — some legions of them 
have been put to flight already by your 
operations this last campaign, and I hope to 
have a hand in dispersing the remainder, 
the first time my dear cousin sets up his 

banners again under the square tower. 

But what art thou meditating with axes and 
hammers?— "I know the pride and the 
"naughtiness of thy heart," and thou lovest 
the sweet visions of architraves, friezes, and 



. - * j -■ — " u,uu " «* ui^iii u elves, uiezes, ana 

All things are cheap m proportion :_ so 'pediments with their tympanums; and thou 
we shall live for very little.— I dined yes- 1 hast found out a pretence a raison de duo 

terday with Mr. H : he is most pleas- \cent livres sterling, to be laid out in four 

antly situated ; and they are all well.-As years, &c. &c. (so as not to be felt, which 

for the books you have received for D , is always added by the D—l as a bait) to 

the bookseller was a fool not to send the justify thyself unto thyself.-It ma v be very 
bill along with them,-I will write to him wise to do this ;-but it is wiser" to keen 
about it.-I wish you was with me for two one's money in one's pocket, whilst there 
months; it would cure you of all evils, are wars without, and rumors of wars 

ghostly and booily : but this, like many other ' within. St. advises his disciples to sel' 

wishes both for you and myself, must have; both coat and waistcoat,- and o G rathe,* 
its completion elsewhere—Adieu, my kind | without shirt or sword, than leave no w» 

30 



.350 



LETTERS. 



nev in their scrip to go to Jerusalem with. 
— Now those quatre ans consecutifs, my 
dear Anthony, are the most precious mor- 
sels of thy life to come (in this world ;) and 
thou wilt do well to enjoy that morsel with- 
out cares, calculations, and curses, and 
damns, and debts; — for as sure as stone is 
stone, and mortar is mortar, &c. 'twill be 
one of the many works of thy repentance. 
— But after all, " if the Fates have decreed 
" it," as you and I have sometimes supposed 
it, — on account of your generosity, "that 
" you are never to be a moneyed man," the 
decree will be fulfilled whether you adorn 
your castle, and line it with cedar, and paint 
it withinside and withoutside with vermil- 
ion, or not, — el cele etant (having a bottle 
of Frontiniac and glass at my right hand) 
I drink, dear Anthony, to thy health and 
happiness, and to the final accomplishments 
of all thy lunary and sublunary projects. 
For six weeks together, after I wrote my 
last letter to you, my projects were many 
stories higher; for I was all that time, as I 
thought, journeying on to the other world. 
. — I fell ill of an epidemic vile fever, which 
killed hundreds about me. — The physicians 
here are the errantest charlatans in Europe, 
or the most ignorant of all pretending fools. 
— I withdrew what was left of me out of 
their hands, and recommended my affair en- 
tirely to Dame Nature: she (dear goddess) 
has saved me in fifty different pinching 
bouts ; and I begin to have a kind of enthu- 
siasm now in her favor, and in my own, that 
one or two more escapes will make me be- 
lieve I shall leave you all at last by transla- 
tion, and not by fair death. I am now stout 
and foolish again as a happy man can wish 
to be ; and am busy playing the fool with 
my uncle Toby, whom I have got soused 
over head and ears in love : — I have many 
hints and projects for other works : all will 
gG on I trust as I wish in this matter. — 
When I have reaped the benefit of this win- 
ter at Toulouse, I cannot see I have any 
thing more to do with it; therefore, after 
having gone with my wife and girl to Bag- 
nieres, I shall return fiom whence I came. 
— Now my wife wants to stay another year 
rosave money • and tnis opposition of wishes, 



though it will not be as sour as lemon, yet 
'twill not be as sweet as sugar-candy. — i 
wish T — would lead Sir Charles to Tou- 
louse ; 'tis as good as any town in the south 
of France. — For my own part, — 'tis not to 
my taste; — but I believe, the groundwork 
of my ennui is more to the eternal platitude 
of the French character : — little variety, 
no originality in it at all, — than to any other 
cause, for they are very civil ; but civility 
itself, in that uniform, wearies and bothers 
one to death. — If I don't. mind, I shall grow 
most stupid and sententious. — Miss Shandy 
is hard at it with music, dancing, and French 
speaking ; in the last of which she does u 
merveille, and speaks it with an excellent 
accent, considering she practises within 
sight of the Pyrenean Mountains. — If the 
snows will suffer me, I propose to spend twe 
or three months at Barege, or Bagnieres, 
but my dear wife is against all schemes of 
additional expenses; which wicked propen- 
sity (though not of despotic power) yet \ 
cannot suffer, — though, by the bye, lauda- 
ble enough. — But she may talk; — I will dr> 
my own way ; and she will acquiesce without 
a word of debate on the subject. — Who can 
say so much in praise of his wife! Few, 1 

trow. — M is out of town, vintaging ; — 

so write me, Monsieur Sterne, gentiUiomme 
Anglois: — 'twill find me. — We are as much 
out of the road of all intelligence here, as 
at the Cape of Good Hope ; — so write a long 
nonsensical letter like this, now and then, 
to me ; — in which, say nothing but what 
may be shown (though I love every para- 
graph and spirited stroke of your pen, others 
might not) ; for you must know, a letter no 
sooner arrives from England, but Curiosity 
is upon her knees to know the contents. — 
Adieu, dear H. believe me 

Your affectionate 

L. STERNE. 

We have had bitter cold weather here 
these fourteen days, — which has obliged us 
to sit with whole pagells of wood lighted up 
to our noses ; — 'tis a dear article ; — but every 
thing else being extreme cheap, Madame 
keeps an excellent good house, with soupt, 
bouUlii roti, — &c. &c. for two hundred anu 
I fifty pounds a year. 



LETTER XXXTIL 



TO MR. FOLEY, AT PARIS. 

Toulouse, Nov. 0, 17G2. 
My Dear Foley, 

I have this week your letter on my table, 
and hope you will forgive my not answer- 
ing- it sooner ; — and even to-day I can but 
write you ten lines, being- engaged at Mrs. 
M — 's. I would not omit one post more 
acknowledging- the favor. — In a few posts I 
will write you a long- one gratis; that is, for 
love. — Thank you for having done what I 
desired you; — and for the future direct to 
rne under cover at Monsieur Brousse's: — 
receive all letters through him, more punc 
tual and sooner than when left at the post 
house. — 

H 's family greet you with mine;— 

we are much together, and never forget 
you. — Forget me not to the Baron, and all 
the circle ; — nor to your domestic circle. 

I am got pretty well, and sport much 
with my uncle Toby in the volume 1 am 
now fabricating for the laughing part of the 
world ; for the melancholy part of it, I have 
nothing but my prayers; so God help them. 
I shall hear from you in a post or two at 
least after you receive this. In the mean 
time, dear Foley, a.dieu, and believe no man 
wishes or esteems you more than your 

L. STERNE. 



LETTERS. 351 

practising a play we are to act here this 
Christmas holidays; — all the dramatis per- 
sona*, are of the English, of which we have 
a happy society, living together like brothers 
and sisters. — Your banker here has just sent 

me word, the tea Mr. II wrote for, is to 

be delivered into my hands; — 'tis all one 
into whose hands the treasure falls; we shall 
pay Bronsse for it the day we get it. — We 
join in our most friendly respects, and be- 
lieve me, dear Foley, truly yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XXXV. 



TO THE SAME. 



LETTER XXXIV. 

TO THE SAME. 

Toulouse, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 17G2. 

Dear Foley, 
I have for this last fortnight, every ppst- 
day, gone to Messrs. B and Sons, in ex- 
pectation of the pleasure of a letter from 
you, with the remittance I desired you to 
send me here. — When a man has no more 
than half a dozen guineas in his pocket, and 
a thousand miles from home, — and in a 
country where he can as soon raise the 

D 1 as a six-livre piece to go to market 

with, in case he has changed his last guinea, 
—you will not envy my situation. God 
©less you, remit me the balance due upon 
title receipt of this. — We are all at H 's, 



Toulouse, Dec. 17, 17(>2. 

My Dear Foley, 
The post after I wrote last, I received 
yours, with the inclosed draught upon t. e 
receiver ; for which I return you all thanks 
I have received this day likewise the box 
and tea, all safe and sound ; — so we shall 
all of us be in our cups this Christmas, ana 
drink without fear or stint. — We begin to 
live extremely happy, and are all together 
every night, — fiddling, laughinrr, and sing- 
ing, and cracking jokes. You will scarce 
believe the news I tell you. There is a 
company of English strollers arrived here, 
who are to act comedies all the Christmas; 
and are now busy in making dresses, and 
preparing some of our best comedies. — Your 
wonder will cease, when I inform you these 
strollers are your friends with the rest of 
our society, to whom I proposed this scheme 
soulagement ; — and I assure you we do 
well. — The next week, with a grand orches- 
tra, we play the Busy Body, — and the Jour- 
ney to London the week after ; but I have 
some thoughts of adapting it to our situation 
and making it the Journey to Toulouse, 
which, with the change of half a dozen 
scenes, may be easily done. — Thus, my dear 
F — , for want of something better, we have 
recourse to ourselves, and strike out the besi 
amusements we can from such materials.— 
My kind love and friendship to all my true 
friends ; my service to the rest. H — — "t> 
family have just left me, having been thie 
last week with us; — they will be with me 



352 LETTERS. 

all the holidays. — In summer we shall visit 
them, and so balance hospitalities. Adieu. 
Yours most truly, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XXXVI. 

TO THE SAME. 

Toulouse, March 29, 17G3 

Dear Foley, 
Though that's a mistake (I mean the 
date of the place) ; for I write at Mr. 

H 's in the country, and have been 

there with my people all the week. — " How 
<; does Tristram do V you say in yours to him ; 
— faith, but so so. — The worst of human 
maladies is poverty ; — though that's a 
second lie; for poverty of spirit is worse 
than poverty of purse by ten thousand per 
cent. — I inclose you a remedy for the one, 
a draught of a hundred and thirty pounds, 
for which I insist upon a rescription by the 
very return, or I will send you and all your 

commissaries to the D 1. — I do not hear 

they have tasted of one fleshy banquet all 
this lent. You will make an excellent grille. 

P , they can make nothing of him but 

bouillon. — I mean my other two friends no 
ill ; so shall send them a reprieve, as they 
acted out of necessity, — not choice. My 
kind respects to Baron d'Holbach, and all 
his household. Say all that's kind for me to 
my other friends. You know how much, 
dear Foley, I am yours, 

L. STERNE. 

I have not five Louis to vapor with in 
this land of coxcombs. My wife's compli- 
ments. 



LETTER XXXVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Toulouse, April 18, 1763. 

Dear Foley, 
I thank you for your punctuality in 
sending me the rescription, and for your 
box by the courier, which came safe by last 
post. I was not surprised much with your 
account of Lord ***** being obliged to give 
way; — and for the rest, all follows in course. 
I suppose you will endeavor to fish and 
(VH.:ii something tor yourself in these trou- 



bled waters ; at least I wish you all a reason- 
able man can wish for himself, which is wish- 
ing enough for you : all the rest is in the 
brain. Mr. Woodhouse (whom you know) 
is also here ; he is a most amiable worthy 
man ; and I have the pleasure of having 
him much with me. In a short time he pro- 
ceeds to Italy. The first week in June I de- 
camp like a patriarch with my whole house- 
hold, to pitch our tents for three months at 
the foot of the Pyrenean Hills at Bangieres, 
where I expect much health and much amuse- 
ment from the concourse of adventurers from 

all corners of the earth. Mrs. M sets 

out, at the same time, for another part of the 
Pyrenean Hills, at Courtray : from whence 
to Italy. This is the general plan of opera- 
tion here, except that I have some thoughts 
of spending the winter at Florence, and 
crossing over with my family to Leghorn 
by water; and in April of returning, by 
way of Paris, home. — But this is a sketch 
only; for in all things I am governed by 
circumstances; so that what is fit to be 
done on Monday may be very unwise on 
Saturday. On all days of the week believe 
me yours, 

With unfeigned truth, 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. All compliments to my Parisian 
friends. 



LETTER XXXVIII. 

TO THE SAME. 

Toulouse, April 29, 1763. 

My Dear Foley. 

Last post my agent wrote me word, he 
would send up from York a bill for fourscore 
guineas, with orders to be paid into Mr. 
Selwin's hands for me. This, he said, he 
would expedite immediately; so 'tis pos- 
sible you may have had advice of it; — and 
'tis possible also the money may not be paid 
this fortnight; therefore, as I set out for 
Bagnieres in that time, be so good as to 
give me credit for the money for a few posts 
or so, aid send me either a rescription for 
the money, or a draught for it ; — at the re- 
ceipt of which, we shall decamp for ten or 
twelve w"eeks. — You will receive twenty 
pounds more on my account; whidi ser 



LETTERS. 

also: — so much for that. As for pleasure 
you have it all amongst you at Paris: we 
have nothing here which deserves the name. 
—I shall scarce be tempted to sojourn an- 
other winter in Toulouse ; for I cannot say 
it suits my health as I hoped : 'tis too moist 
— and I cannot Keep clear of agues here ; 
— so that, if I stay the next winter on this 
side of the water, 'twill be either at Nice 
er Florence; — and I shall return to England 
Li April. — Wherever I am, believe me. 
dear Foley, that I am 

Yours faithfully, 

L. STERNE 

Madame and Mademoiselle present their 
best compliments. Remember me to all 
regard, particularly Messrs. Panchaud, and 
Ihe rest of your household. 



LETTER XXXIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



Toulouse, May 21, l?f>3. 

I took the liberty, three weeks ago, to de- 
sire you would be so kind as to send me 
fourscore pounds, having received a letter 
the same post from my agent, that he would 
order the money to be paid to your corre- 
spondent in London in a fortnight. — It is 
some disappointment to me that you have 
taken no notice of my letter, especially as I 
told you we waited for the money before 
we set out for Bagnieres; — and so little 
distrust had I that such a civility would be 
refused me, that we have actually had all 
our things packed up these eight days, in 
hourly expectation of receiving a letter. — 
Perhaps my good friend has waited till he 
heard the money was paid in London ; — but 
you might have trusted to my honor, that 
all the cash in your iron-box (and all the 
bankers in Europe put together) could not 
have tempted me to say the thing that is 
not — I hope, before this, you will have re- 
ceived an account of the money being paid 
<n London. But it would have been taken 
kindly, if you had wrote me word you would 
transmit me the money when you had re- 
ceived it, but no sooner ; for Mr. R , of 

Montpellier, though I know him not, yet 
2U 



3f>3 

knows enough of me to have given me 
credit for a fortnight for ten times the sum 

I am, dear F , your friend 

and hearty well-wisher, 

L. STERNE 

I saw the family of the H yesterday, 

and asked them if you was in the land of 
the living. — They said, Yea; for thev had 
just received a letter from you. — After all, 
I heartily forgive you ; for you have done 
me a signal service in mortifying me, and 
it is this : — I am determined to grow rich 
upon it. 

Adieu, and God send you wealth and 
happiness. All compliments to Be- 
fore April next, I am obliged to revisit your 
metropolis, in my way to England. 



LETTER XL. 



TO THE SAME. 



Toulouse, June 9, 1763. 

My Dear Foley, 

I this moment received yours; conse- 
quently, the moment I got it, I sat down to 
answer it. — So much for a logical inference. 

Now, believe me, I had never wrote you 
so testy a letter, had I not both loved and 
esteemed you ; — and it was merely in vin- 
dication of the rights of friendship that I 
wrote in a way as if I was hurt ; — for neg- 
lect me in your heart, I knew you could 
not, without cause; which my heart told 
me I never had — nor will ever give you.- 
I was the best friend with you that ever 
I was in my life, before my letter had got a 
league, and pleaded the true excuse for my 
friend, "That he was oppressed with a 
" multitude of business." Go on, my dear 

F , and have but that excuse (so much 

do I regard your interest) that I would be 
content to suffer a real evil without future 
murmuring: — but, in truth, my disappoint- 
ment was partly chimerical at the bottom, 
having a letter of credit for two hundred 
pounds from a person I never saw, by me , 
— but which, out of a nicety of temper, I 
would not make any use of. — I set out in 
two days for Bagnieres; but direct to me 
to Brousse, who will forward all my letters. 

— Dear F , adieu. Believe me 

Yours affectionately, 

L. STERN* 
30* 



M64 



LETTERS. 



LETTER XLI 



TO THE SAME. 



Toulouse. June 12, 1763. 

Dear Foley, 
Luckily, just before I was stepping into 
my chaise for Bagnieres, has a strayed fifty 
(>ound bill found its way to me ; so I have 
sent it to its lawful owner inclosed. — My 
noodle of an agent, instead of getting Mr. 
Selwin to advise you he had received the 
money (which would have been enough) 
has got a bill for it, and sent it rambling to 
the farthest part of France after me : and, 
if it had not caught me just now, it might 
have followed me into Spain ; for I shall 
cross the Pyreneans, and spend a week in 
that kingdom, which is enough for a fertile 
brain to write a volume upon. — When I 
write the history of my travels, — Memo- 
randum ! I am not to forget how honest a 
man I have for a banker at Paris. — But, 
my dear friend, when you say you dare 
trust me for what little occasions I may 
have, you have as much faith as honesty, — 
and more of both than of good policy. — I 
thank you however ten thousand times ; — 
and, except such liberty as I have lately 
taken with you, — and that too at a pinch, — 
I say, beyond that I will not trespass upon 
your good-nature or friendliness to serve 

me. — God bless you, dear F . 

I am yours whilst 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XLII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Montpellier, Oct. 5, 1763. 

Dear Foley, 
I am ashamed I have not taken an oppor- 
tunity of thanking you before now, for your 
friendly act of civility, in ordering Brousse, 
vour correspondent at Toulouse, in case I 
should have occasion, to pay me fifteen 
uundred livres ; — which, as I knew the offer 
came from your heart, I made no difficulty 
of accepting. — In my way through Tou- 
louse to Marseilles, where we have been, — 
but neither liking the place nor Aix (par- 



ticularly t'.ie latter, it being a parliament 
town, of which Toulouse has given me a 
surfeit) we have returned here, where we 
shall reside the winter. — My wife and 
daughter purpose to stay a year at leasV be- 
hind me, and, when winter is over, to re- 
turn to Toulouse, or go to Montauban, 
where they will stay till they return, or I 
fetch them. — For myself, I shall set out in 
February for England, where my heart has 
been fled these six months: — but I shall 
stay a fortnight with my friends at Paris ; 
though I verily believe, if it was not for 
the pleasure of seeing and chattering with 
you, I should pass on directly to Brussels, 
and so on to Rotterdam, for the sake of 
seeing Holland, and embark from thence to 
London. — But I must stay a little with 
those I love and have so many reasons to 
regard : — you cannot pla)e too much of 
this to your own score. — I have had an offer 
of going to Italy a fortnight ago; — but I 
must like my subject as well as the terms ; 
neither of which were to my mind. — Pray 
what English have you at Paris 1 — where 

is my young friend Mr. F ! We hear 

of three or four English families coming to 
us here. — If I can be serviceable to any 
you would serve, you have but to write. — 

Mr. H has sent my friend W 's 

picture. — You have seen the original, or I 
would have sent it you. — I believe I shall 
beg leave to get a copy of my own from 
yours, when I come in propria persona ; 
— till when, God bless you, my dear friend, 
and believe me 

Most faithfully yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XLIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Montpellier, Jan. 5, 1764. 

My Dear Friend, 
You see I cannot pass over the fifth of 
the month without thinking of you, and 
writing to you. — The last is a periodical 
habit ; — the first is from my heart ; and I 
do it oftener than I remember : — however, 
from both motives together, I maintain I 
have a right to the pleasure of a single 



LETTERS. 



3A3 



line, — be it only to tell me how your watch 
goes. — You know how much happier it 
would make me to know that all things be- 
longing to you went on well. — You are go- 
ing to have them all to yourself, I hear ; and 

that Mr. S is true to his first intention 

of leaving business. — I hope this will enable 
you to accomplish yours in a shorter time, 
that you may get to your long-wished-for 
retreat of tranquillity and silence. — When 
you have got to your fire-side, and into 
your arm-chair, (and, by the bye, have an- 
other to spare for a friend) and are so much 
a sovereign as to sit in your furred cap, if 
you like it, though I should not (for a man's 
ideas are at least the cleaner for being 
dressed decently) why then it will be a 
miracle if I do not glide in like a ghost 
upon you, — and, in a very unghostlike 
fashion, help you oft' with a bottle of your 
best wine. 

January 15. — It does not happen every 
day that a letter begun in the most perfect 
health, should be concluded in the greatest 
weakness. — I wish the vulgar, high and low, 
do not say it was a judgment upon me, for 
taking all this liberty with ghosts. — Be it 
as it may, I took a ride, when the first part 
of this was wrote, towards Perenas, — and 
returned home in a shivering fit, though I 
ought to have been in a fever, for I had 
tired my beast ; and he was as unmovable 
as Don Quixote's wooden horse; and my 
arm was half dislocated in whipping him. 
— This, quoth I, is inhuman. — No, says a 
peasant on foot behind me, I'll drive him 
home ; so he laid on his posteriors ; but 
'twas needless : as his face was turn'd to- 
wards Montpellier, he began to trot. But 
to return . — This fever has confined me ten 
days in my bed ; — I have suffered in this 
scuffle with death terribly ; — but unless the 
spirit of prophecy deceive me, — I shall not 
die but live. — In the mean time, dear F., let 
'is live as merrily, but as innocently as we 
can. — It has ever been as good, if not better, 
than a bishopric to me ; — and I desire no 
other. — Adieu, my dear friend, and believe 
me yours, 

L. STERNE. 

Please to give the inclosed to Mr. T., and 
tell him I thank him cordially from my heart 
for his great good-will. 



LETTER XLIV. 

TO THE SAME 

Montpellier, Jan 20, 17ft4 

My Dear Friend, 
Hearing by Lord Rochford (who in pass 
ing through here in his way to Madrid has 
given me a call) that my worthy friend Mr. 
Fox was now at Paris, — I have inclosed a 
letter to him, which you will present in 
course, or direct to him. I suppose you are 
full of English ; — but in short, we are here 
as if in another world, where, unless some 
strayed soul arrives, we know nothing of 

what is going on in yours. — Lord G r, 

I suppose, is gone from Paris, or I had wrote 
also to him. I know you are as busy as a 
bee, and have few moments to yourself; 
— nevertheless bestow one of them upon 
an old friend, and write me a line ; — and if 
Mr. F. is too idle, and has aught to say to 
me, pray write a second line for him. — We 

had a letter from Miss P this week, 

who it seems has decamped for ever from 
Paris. — All is for the best ; — which is my 
general reflection upon many things in this 
world. — Well, I shall shortly come and 
shake you by the hand in St. Sauveur, if 
still you are there. My wife returns to 
Toulouse, and purposes to spend the summer 
at Bagnieres ; — I, on the contrary, go and 
visit my wife, the church, in Yorkshire. — 
We all live the longer, — at least the hap- 
pier, for having things our own way. — This 
is my conjugal- maxim : — I own 'tis not the 
best of maxims; — but I maintain 'tis not 
the worst. Adieu, dear F., and believe me 
Yours with truth, 

L. STERN B 



LETTER XLV. 

TO MRS. F. 

■ Montpellier, Feb. I 1764 

I am preparing, my dear Mrs. F., tj .eave 
France, for I am heartily tired of it. — That 
insipidity there is in French characters hart 
disgusted your friend Yorick. — I have been 
dangerously ill, and cannot think that the 
sharp air of Montpellier has been of serv:c*» 



350 



LETTERS. 



fo me ; and so my physicians told me when I 
they had me under their hands for above a j 
month : — " If you stay any longer here, Sir, 
" it will be fatal to you." — And why, good 
people, were you not kind enough to tell 
me this sooner? — After having discharged 
them, I told Mrs. Sterne that I should set 
out for England very soon; — but as she 
chooses to remain in France for two or 
three years, I have no objection, except that 
I wish my girl in England. — The States of 
Languedoc are met; — 'tis a fine raree-show, 
with the usual accompaniments of fiddles, 
-fcears, and puppet-shows. I believe I shall 
step into my post-chaise with more alacrity 
to fly from these sights, than a Frenchman 
would to fly to them ; — and, except a tear 
at parting with my little slut, I shall be in 
high spirits; and every step I take that 
brings me nearer England, will, I think, 
help to set this poor frame to rights. Now 
pray write to me, directed to Mr. F. at Paris, 
and tell me what I am to bring you over. 
How do I long to greet all my friends ! few 
do I value more than yourself. — My wife 
chooses to go to Montauban, rather than 
stay here ; in which I am truly passive. — 
If this should not find you at Bath, I hope 
it will be forwarded to you, as I wish to 
fulfil your commissions; — and so adieu. — 
Accept every warm wish for your health, 
and believe me ever yours, 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. My physicians have almost poisoned 
me with what they call bouillons refraichis- 
stints: — 'tis a cock flayed alive, and boiled 
v/Lth poppy-seeds, then pounded in a mortar, 
afterwards passed through a sieve. — There 
is to be one craw-fish in it ; and I was 
gravely told it must be a male one, — a fe- 
inale would do me more hurt than good ! 



LETTER XLVI. 



TO MISS STERNE. 



Paris, May 15, 1764. 

My Dear Lydia, 
By this time I suppose your mother and 
aeif are fixed at Montauban, and I therefore 
direct to your banker, to be delivered to you. 
— I acquiesced in your staying in France: 
- likewise it was your mother's wish: — 



but I must tell you both (that unless your 
health had not been a plea made use of) J 
should have wished you both to return with 
me. — I have sent you the Spectators, and 
other books, particularly Metastasio; but 1 
beg my girl to read the former, and onl 
make the latter her amusement. — I hope 
you have not forgot my last request, to 
make no friendships with the French wo- 
men ; — not that I think ill of them all ; but 
sometimes women of the best principles are 
the most insinuating ; — nay, I am so jeal- 
ous of you, that I should be miserable to see 
you had the least grain of coquetry in your 
composition. — You have enough to do; — 
for I have also sent you a guitar ; — and as 
you have no genius for drawing (though you 
never could be made to believe it), pray 
waste not your time about it. — Remember 
to write to me as to a friend : — in short, 
whatever comes into your little head ; and 
then it will be natural. If your mother's 
rheumatism continues, and she chooses to 
go to Ragnieres, tell her not to be stopped 
for want of money, for my purse shall be 
as open as my heart. I have preached at 
the Ambassador's chapel. — Hezekiah.* — 
(An odd subject, your mother will say.) 
There was a concourse of all nations, and 
religions too. — I shall leave Paris in a few 
days. I am lodged in the same hotel with 

Mr. T : they are good and generous 

souls. — Tell your mother that I hope she 
will write to me; and that when she does 
so, I may also receive a letter from my 
Lydia. 
Kiss your mother from me, and believe 

me 

Your affectionate 

L. STERNE 



LETTER XLVII. 

TO MR. FOLEY. 

York, August 6, 1764 

My Dear Foley, 

There is a young lady with whom I 

have sent a letter to you, who will a -ri^e 

at Paris, in her way to Italy ; — her name is 

Miss Tuting: a lady known and loved by 



* See Sermon XV 11. 



LETTERS. 

the whole kingdom : — if you can be of any 
aid to her in your advice, &c. as to her 
journey, &c. your good-nature and polite- 
ness I am sure need no spur from me to do 
it I was sorry we were like the two buck- 
ets of a well, whilst in London, for we were 
never able to be both resident together the 
month I continued in and about the envi- 
rons. If I get a cough this winter which 
holds me three days, you will certainly see 
me at Paris the week following ; for now I 
abandon every thing in this world to health 
and to my friends ; — for the last sermon 
that I shall ever preach, was preached at 
Paris ; — so I am altogether an idle man, or 
rather a free one, which is better. I sent, 
last post, twenty pounds to Mrs. Sterne ; 
which makes a hundred pounds remitted 
since I got here. You must pay yourself 
what I owe you out of it, — and place the rest 
to account. Betwixt this and Lady-day next, 
Mrs. Sterne will draw, from time to time, 
upon you to about the amount of a hundred 
Louis, — but not more, — (I think) I having 
left her a hundred in her pocket. — But you 
shall always have money beforehand of 
mine ; — and she purposes to spend no farther 
than five thousand livres in the year ; — but 
twenty pounds this way or that, makes no 
difference between us. — Give my kindest 
compliments to Mr. P . I have a thou- 
sand things to say to you; and would go 
half-way to Paris to tell them you in your 

ear. The Messrs. T , H , &c. and 

many more of your friends with whom I 
now am, send their services. — Mine to all 
friends. — Yours, dear F., most truly, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XLVIII. 



TO J- 



September 4. 1764. 



Now, my dear, dear Anthony, I do not 
think a week or ten days playing the good 
rellow (at this very time) at Scarborough so 
abominable a thing; but if a man could get 
there cleverly, and every soul in his house 
in the mind to try what could be done in 
furtherance thereof, I have no one to con- 
sult in this affair : — therefore, as a man may 



357 

do worse things, the English of all which 
is this, — That I am going to leave a few 
poor sheep here in the wilderness for four- 
teen days; — and, from pride and naughti- 
ness of heart, to go and see what is doing 
at Scarborough, — stedfastly meaning after- 
wards to lead a new life and strengthen my 
faith. — Now some folk say there is much 
company there; and some say not; and I 
believe there is neither the one nor the 
other : — but will be both, if the world will 
have but a month's patience or so. — No, my 

dear H , I did not delay sending your 

letter directly to the post. — As there are 
critical times, or rather turns and revolu- 
tions in *** humors, I knew not what the 
delay of an hour might hazard. — I will an- 
swer for him he has seventy times seven 
forgiven you, — and as often wish'd you ai 

the D 1. After many oscillations, the 

pendulum will rest as firm as ever. 

I send all compliments to Sir C. D — and 
G — s. I love them from my soul. — If G — t 
is with you, him also. — I go on, not rapidly, 
but well enough, with my uncle Toby's 
amours. There is no sitting and cudgel- 
ling one's brains whilst the sun shinea 
bright; — 'twill be all over in six or seven 
weeks; and there are dismal months enow 
after, to endure suffocation by a brimstone 
fireside. — If you can get to Scarborough, 
do. — A man who makes six tons of alum a 
week, may do any thing. — Lord Granby is 
to be there. — What a temptation ! 
Yours, affectionately, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XLIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



Coxwould, Thursday, Sept. 1764, 

My Dear Cousin, 
I am but this moment returned from 
Scarborough, where I have been drinking 
the waters ever since the races ; and have 
received marvellous strength, had I not de- 
bilitated it as fast as I got it, by playing the 
good fellow with Lord Granby and Co. too 
much. I rejoice you have been encamp'd 
at Harrowgate; from 'vhich, by now, I sup- 
pose you are decamp'd ; — otherwise, as idle 
a beast as I have been, 1 would have saor«- 



358 LETTERS. 

ficed a few daye to the God of Laughter 
with you and your jolly set. — I have done 
nothing good that I know of, since I left 
you, except paying off your guinea and a 

half to K , in my way through York 

hither. — I must try now and do better. Go 
on and prosper for a month. 

Your affectionate, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER L. 

TO MR. FOLEY, AT PARIS. 

York, Sept. 29, 1764. 
My Dear Friend, 

I having just had the honor of a letter 
from Miss Tuting, full of the acknowledg- 
ments of your attention and kind services 
to her, — I will not believe these arose from 

the D. of A 's letters, nor mine. 

Surely, she needed no recommendation ; — 
the truest and most honest compliment I 
can pay you, is to say they came from your 
own good heart, only you was introduced to 
the object ; — for the rest follow'd in course. 
— However, let me cast in my mite of thanks 
to the treasury which belongs to good- 
natured actions. I have been with Lord 
G — y these three weeks at Scarborough ; — 
the pleasures of which I found somewhat 
more exalted than those of Bagnieres last 
year. — I am now returned to my Philosophi- 
cal Hut to finish Tristram, which I calcu- 
late will be ready for the world about Christ- 
mas ; at which time I decamp from hence, 
and fix my head-quarters at London for the 
winter, — unless my cough pushes me for- 
wards to your metropolis, — or that I can 
persuade some gros my Lord to take a trip 
to you. — I'll try if I can make him relish the 
joys of the Thuilleries, Opera Comique, fyc. 

I had this week a letter from Mrs. Sterne, 
from Montauban ; in which she tells me she 
has occasion for fifty pounds immediately. — 
Will you send an order to your correspond- 
ent at Montauban to pay her so much cash 1 
— and I will, in three weeks, send as much 
to Becket. — But as her purse is low, for 
God's sake write directly.— Now you must 
do something equally essential, — to rectify 
a mistake in the mind of your correspondent 
uiere, who it seems gave her a hint, not 



long ago, that she was separated from me 
for life. Now as this is not true in the first 
place, and may give a disadvantageous im 
pression of her to those she lives amongst. 
— 'twould be unmerciful to let her, or my 
daughter, suffer by it ; — so do be so good as 
to undeceive him ; — for, in a year or two 
she proposes (and indeed I expect it with 
impatience from her) to rejoin me; — and 
tell them I have all the confidence in the 
world she will not spend more than I can 
afford ; and I only mentioned two hundred 
guineas a year, — because 'twas right to 
name some certain sum ; for which I begged 
you to give her credit. — I write to you of 
all my most intimate concerns, as to a 
brother; so excuse me, dear Foley. God 
bless you ! — Believe me 

Yours affectionately, 

L. STERNE. 

Mr. Panchaud, d'HoI- 



Compliments 
bach, &.c. 



to 



LETTER LI. 



TO THE SAME. 



York, November 11, 1774 

My Dear Friend, 
I sent, ten days ago, a bank-bill of thirty 
pounds to Mr. Becket ; and, this post, one 
of sixty. — When I get to London, which 
will be in five weeks, you will receive what 
shall always keep you in bank for Mrs. 
Sterne ; in the mean time I have desired 
Becket to send you fourscore pounds ; and 
if my wife, before I get to London, should 
have occasion for fifty Louis, let her not wait 
a minute; and if I have not paid it, a week 
or a fortnight, I know, will break no squares 
with a good and worthy friend. I will contrive 
to send you these two new volumes of Tris- 
tram, as soon as ever I get them from the 
press. — You will read as odd a tour through 
France as ever was projected or executed 
by traveller, or travel-writer, since the 
world began. — Tis a laughing, good-tem- 
pered satire against travelling (as puppies 
travel); Panchaud will enjoy it. — I am quite 
civil to your Parisians, — et pour cause, you 
know : — 'tis likely I may see them in spring. 
— Is it possible for you to get me over a 
copy of my picture any how 1 If so, I would 



LETTERS. 



359 



write to Mademoiselle N to make as 

good a copy from it as she possibly could, — 
with a view to do her service here; — and I 
would remit her the price. — I really believe 
it would be the parent of a dozen portraits to 
her, if she executes it with the spirit of the 
original in your hands, — for it will be seen 
by many ; — and as my phiz is as remarkable 
as myself, if she preserves the true charac- 
ter of both, it will do her honor and service 
too. — Write me a line about this, and tell 
me jou are well and happy. — Will you pre- 
sent my kind respects to the worthy Baron 1 
— I shall send him one of the best impres- 
sions of my picture from Mr. Reynolds's ; — 

another to Monsieur P . 

My love to Mr. S n and P d. 

I am most truly yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LTI. 



TO- 



Esa. 



Nov. 13, 1764. 

Dear Dear Cousin, 
'Tis a church militant week with me, 
full of marches and counter-marches, — and 
treaties about Stillington common, which 
we are going- to inclose, — otherwise I would 
have obeyed your summons; — and yet I 
could not well have done it this week nei- 
ther, having* received a letter from C — , 
who has been very ill ; and is coming* down 
to stay a week or ten days with me. — Now 
I know he is ambitious of being* better ac- 
quainted with you ; and longs from his soul 
for a sig-ht of you in your own castle. — I can- 
not do otherwise than bring* him with me ; 
— nor can I g*allop away and leave him in 
an empty house to pay a visit to from Lon- 
don, as he comes half express to see me. — 
I thank you for the care of my northern 
vintage. — I fear, after all, I must give it a 
fermentation on the other side of the Alps, 
which is better than being on the lees with 
it; but nous verrons: — yet I fear, as it has 
got such hold of my brain, and comes upon 
it like an armed man at nights, — I must 
give way, for quietness sake, or be hag- 
ridden with the conceit of it all my life long. 
— I have been Miss-ridden this last week 
Dy a couple of romping girls (Jbien mises el 



comme il faut) who might as well have 
been in the house with me (though perhaps 
not, my retreat here is too quiet for them) 
but they have taken up all my time, and have 
given my judgment and fancy more airing 
than they wanted. — These things accord nui. 
well with sermon-making : — but 'tis my vile 
errantry, as Sancho says, and that is all 
that can be made of it. — I trust all goes 
swimmingly on with your alum ; that the 
works amuse you, and call you twice out 
(at least) a day. — I shall see them, I trust, 
in ten days; or thereabouts. — If it was any 
way possible, I would set out this moment, 
though I have no cavalry (except a she-ass.) 
Give all friendly respects to Mrs. C. and to 
Col. H — s and the garrison, both of Guisbro 
and Skelton. I am, dear Anthony, 

Affectionately yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LIIL 

TO MR. FOLEY, AT PARIS. 

York, Nov. 16, 1764. 

My Dear Friend, 

Three posts before I had the favor of 
yours (which is come to hand this moment) 
I had wrote to set Mrs. Sterne right in her 
mistake, — that you had any money of mine 
in your hands ; — being very sensible that 
the hundred pounds I had sent you, through 
Becket's hands, was but about what would 
balance with you. The reason of her error 
was owing to my writing her word I would 
send you a bill, in a post or two. for fifty 
pounds; which, my finances falling short 
just then, I deferred ; so that I had paid no- 
thing to any one, — but was, however, come 
to York this day ; and I have sent you a 
draught for a hundred pounds. In honest 
truth, a fortnight ago I had not the cash ; — 
but I am as honest as the king (as Sancho 
Panca says,) only not so rich. 

Therefore, if Mrs. Sterne should want 
thirty Louis more, let her have them ; and 
I will balance all (which will not be much) 
with honor at Christmas, when I shall be 
in London, having now just finished my 
two volumes of Tristram. — I have some 
thoughts of going to Italy this ye;ir; a» 
least I shall not defer it above another, — I 



3Gv) LETTERS. 

nave been with Lord Granby, and with 
Lord Shelburne; but am now sat down till 
December in my sweet retirement. I wish 
you was sat down as happily, and as free 
of all worldly cares. — In a few years, my 
dear F., I hope to see you a real country 
gentleman, though not altogether exiled 
from your friends in London : there I shall 
spend every winter of my life, in the same 
lap of contentment where I enjoy myself 
now, and wherever I go, — we must bring 
three parts in four of the treat along with 
us. In short, we must be happy within, 
and then few things without us make 
much difference. This is my Shandean 
philosophy. — You will read a comic, ac- 
count of my journey from Calais, through 
Paris, to the Garonne, in these volumes : 
my friends tell me they are done with spir- 
it : — it must speak for itself. Give my kind 
respects to Mr. Selwin and my friend 
Panchaud. — When you see Baron d'Hol- 
bach, present him my respects, and believe 
me, dear F., 

Yours cordially, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LIV. 

TO DAVID GARRICK, ESQ. 

London, March 16, 1765. 

Dear Garrick, 
I threatexNed you with a letter in one I 
wrote a few weeks ago to Foley ; but (to 
my shame be it spoken) I lead such a life 
of dissipation, I have never had a moment 
to myself which has not been broke in 
upon, by one engagement or impertinence 
or another; and as plots thicken towards 
the latter end of a piece, I find, unless I 
take pen and ink just now, I shall not be 
aole to do it till either I am got into the 
country, or you to the city. You are teased 
and tormented too much by your correspond- 
ents, to return to us; and with accounts 
how much your friends, and how much 
your theatre, wants you ; — so that I will not 
magnify either our loss or yours, but hope 
cordially to see you soon. — Since I wrote 
.ast, 1 have frequently stepped into your 
nouse ; tha* is as frequently as I could take 
lue whok party, where I dined, along with 



me. — This was but justice to you, as 4 
walked in as a Wit ; but with regard tc 
myself, I balanced the account thus : — I am 

sometimes in my friend 's house ; but 

he is always in Tristram Shandy's; where 
my friends say he will continue (and, J 
hope, the prophecy is true for my own im- 
mortality) even when he himself is no more. 
I have had a lucrative winter's campaign 
here. — Shandy sells well. — I am taxing the 
public with two more volumes of Sermons, 
which will more than double the gains of 
Shandy. — It goes into the world with a 
prancing list de toute la noblesse ; which 
will bring me in three hundred pounds, ex- 
clusive of the sale of the copy; — so that, 
with all the contempt of money which ma 
facon de penser has ever impressed on me, 
I shall be rich in spite of myself; but I 
scorn, you must know, in the high ton I 
take at present, to pocket all this trash. — I 
set out to lay a portion of it out in the ser- 
vice of the world, in a tour round Italy ; 
where I shall spring game, or the deuce is 
in the dice! — In the beginning of Septem- 
ber I quit England, that I may avail myself 
of the time of vintage, when all Nature is 
joyous; and so saunter, philosophically, for 
a year or so, on the other side the Alps. — I 
hope your pilgrimages have brought Mrs. 
Garrick and yourself back d la Jleur de 
jeunesse. — May you both long feel the 
sweets of it, and your friends with you ! — 
Do, dear friend, make my kindest wishes 
and compliments acceptable to the best and 
wisest of the daughters of Eve ! — You 
shall ever believe, and ever find me affec- 
tionately yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LV. 

TO THE SAME. 

Bath, April 6, 1775. 

I scalp you ! my dear Garrick ! my dear 
friend ! — Foul befall the man who hurts a 
hair of your head ! — and so full was I of 
that very sentiment, that my letter had not 
been put into the post-office ten minutes, 
before my heart smote me ; and I sent to 
recall it, — but failed. — You aje sadly to 
blame, Shandy, for this, quoth [, leaning 



( 



LETTERS. 

with my head on my hand as I recriminated 
upon my false delicacy in the affair : — Gar- 
nekV nerves (if he has any left) are as fine 
and as delicately spun as thy own! — his 
sentiments as honest and friendly ! — Thou 
knowest, Shandy, that he loves thee, — why 
wilt thou hazard him a moment's pain ! 
Puppy, fool, coxcomb, jack-ass, &c. &c. — 
and so I balanced the account to your favor, 
before I received it drawn up in your way. 
— I say your ivay, for it is not stated so 
much to your honor and credit as I had 
passed the account before ; — for it was a 
most lamented truth, that I never received 
one of the letters your friendship meant 
me, except whilst in Paris. — Oh ! how I con- 
gratulate you for the anxiety the world has, 
and continues to be under, for your return ! 
— Return, return to the few who love you, 
and the thousands who admire you ! — The 
moment you set your foot upon your stage, 
— mark, I tell it you, — by some magic irre- 
sisted power, every fibre about your heart 
will vibrate afresh, and as strong and as 
feelingly as ever; — Nature, with Glory at 
her back, will light up the torch within 
you ; and there is enough of it left to heat 
and enlighten the world these many, many 
years ! 

Heaven be praised ! (I utter it from my 
soul) that your Lady, and my Minerva, is 
in a condition to walk to Windsor! — full 
rapturously will I lead the graceful pilgrim 
to the temple ; where I will sacrifice with 
the purest incense to her; — but you may 
worship with me or not, — 'twill make no 
difference either in the truth or warmth 
of my devotion; — still (after all I have 
seen) I still maintain her peerless ! 

Powell, good Heaven ! — give me some 
one with less smoke and more fire ! — There 
are who, like the Pharisees, still think they 
shall be heard for much speaking. Come, 
come away, my dear Garrick, and teach us 
another lesson. 

Adieu! — I love you dearly, and your 
Lady better ; — not hobby-horsically, — but 
most sentimentally and affectionately; — for 

am yours (that is, if you never say an- 



3G1 



LETTER LVI. 



TO MR. FOLEY. 



Bath, Aprii 15, 1765 

My Dear Foley, 

My wife tells me she has drawn for one 
hundred pounds; — and 'tis fit that you 
should be paid it that minute: — the money 
is now in Becket's hands. Send me, my 
dear Foley, my account, that I may dis- 
charge the balance to this time, and know 
what to leave in your hands. — T have made 
a good campaign of it this year in the field 
of the literati ; — my two volumes of Tris- 
tram, and two of Sermons, which I shall 
print very soon, will bring me a consider- 
able sum. Almost all the nobility in Eng- 
land honor me with their names ; and 'tis 
thought it will be the largest and most 
splendid list which ever pranced before a 
book since subscriptions came into fashion. 
— Pray present my most sincere compli- 
ments to Lady H ; whose name I hope 

to insert with many others. As so many 
men of genius favor me with their names 
also, I will quarrel with Mr. Hume, and 
call him Deist, and what not, unless I have 

his name too. — My love to Lord W 

Your name, Foley, I have put in as a free- 
will offering of my labors. Your list of sub- 
scribers you will send : — 'tis but a crown for 
sixteen sermons. — Dog-cheap ! but I am in 
quest of honor, not money. — Adieu, adieu' 
Believe me, dear Foley, 

Yours truly, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LVII. 

TO MR. W. 



other word about ) with all the senti 

rnents of love and friendship you deserve i love ; 
from me, 



L. STERNE. 



Coxwould, May 23, 17«5. 
At this moment I am sitting in my sum- 
mer-house with my head and heart full, not 
of my uncle Toby's amours with the Widow 
Wadman, but my sermons; and your letter 
has drawn me out of a pensive mood : — the 
spirit of it pleaseth me; — but, in this soli- 
tude, what can I tell or write to you but 
about myself! — 1 am glad that you are in 
twill cure the spleen, 



2V 



at least, 
which has a bad effect on both man and 
woman. - I myself must ever have som«* 
'31 



362 



LETTERS. 



DulcineT, in my head ; it harmonizes the 
soul ; — and in those cases I first endeavor 
to makt? the. lady believe so; or rather, I 
begin first to make myself believe that I 
am in love : — but I carry on my affairs 
quite in the French way, sentimentally, — 
L" amour (say they) n'est rien sans senti- 
ment. — Now, notwithstanding they make 
such a pother about the ivord, they have 
no precise idea annex'd to it : — and so much 
for that same subject called Love. — I must 
tell you how I have just treated a French 
gentleman of fortune in France, who took 
a liking to my daughter : — Without any 
ceremony (having got my direction from 
my wife's banker) he wrote me word that 
he was in love with my daughter ; and de- 
sired to know what fortune I would give 
her at present, and how much at my death: 
- — by the bye, I think there was very little 
sentiment on his side. — My answer was, 
" Sir, I shall give her ten thousand pounds 
the day of marriage. My calculation is as 
follows : — She is not eighteen, you are sixty 
two ; — there goes five thousand pounds : — 
tnen, Sir, you at least think her not ugly; she 
has many accomplishments, — speaks Italian, 
French, plays upon the guitar ; and as I fear 
you play upon no instrument whatever, I 
think you will be happy to take her at my 
terms ; for here finishes the account of the 
ten thousand pounds." — I do not suppose 
out he will take this as I mean ; that is, a 
flat refusal. — I have had a parsonage-house 
burnt down by the carelessness of my 
curate's wife. — As soon as I can, I must re> 
build it, I trow ; — but I lack the means at 
present ; yet I am never happier than when 
I have not a shilling in my pocket: for 
when T have, I can never call it my own. — 
Adieu, my dear friend: — may you enjoy 
better health than me, though not better 
spirits, lor that is impossible. 

Yours sincerely, 

L. STERNE. 

My compliments to the Colonel. 



LETTER LVIII. 

TO MR. FOLEY, AT PARIS. 

York, July 13, 1775. 

My Dear Sir, 
i wrote some time in spring, to beg you 
would favor me with my account. I believe 



you was set out from Paris, and that M 
Garrick brought the letter with him ; which, 
possibly, he gave you. In the hurry of youi 
business you might forget the contents of 
it; and in the hurry of mine in town (though 
I called once) I could not get to see you. I 
decamp for Italy in September ; and shall 
see your face at Paris, you may be sure : 
but I shall see it with more pleasure when 
I am out of debt ; — which is your own fault, 
for Becket has had money left in his hands 
for that purpose. — Do send Mrs. Sterne her 
two last volumes of Tristram ; they arrived 
with yours in spring, and she complains she 
has not got them. — My best services to Mr. 
Panchaud. — I am busy composing two vol- 
umes of Sermons ; they will be printed in 
September, though I fear not time enough 
to bring them with me. Your name is 
amongst the list of a few of my honorary 
subscribers, who subscribe for love. — If you 
see Baron d'Holbach and Diderot, present 
my respects to them. — If the Baron wants 
any English books, he will let me know 
and I will bring them with me. — Adieu. 
I am truly yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LIX. 

TO THE SAME. 

London, October 7, 1765. 

Dear Sir, 

It is a terrible thing to be in Paris with- 
out a periwig on a man's head ! In seven 
days from the date of this, I should be in 
that case, unless you tell your neighbor, 
Madame Requiere, to get her bon mari de 
me fair e un peruque a. bourse, au mieux — 
c 'est-d-dire — une la plus extraordinaire — 
la plus jolie — la plus gentille — et la plus — 

Mais qu'importe? fai Vhonneur d'etre 
grand critique — et bien difficile encore dans 
les affaires de peruques ; — and, in one 
word, that he gets it done in five days after 
notice. — 

I beg pardon for this liberty, my dear 
friend, and for the trouble of forwarding 
this by the very next post. If my friend 
Mr. F. is in Paris, my kind love to him 
and respects to all others. — In sad haste.— 
Yours, truly, 

L SI ERNE. 



LETTERS. 



363 



I have paid into Mr. Becket's hands six 
mndred pounds ; which you may draw upon 
at sight, according as either Mrs. Sterne or 
myself make it expedient. 



LETTER LX. 

TO MR. PANCHAUD, AT PARIS 

Beau Point Voisin, Nov. 7, 1765. 

Dear Sir, 
I forgot to desire you to forward what- 
ever letters came to your hand, to your 
hanker at Rome, to wait for me against I 
get there, as it is uncertain how long I may 
stay at Turin, &c. &c. : at present, I am 
held a prisoner in this town by the sudden 
swelling of two pitiful rivulets, from the 
snows melting on the Alps ; so that we 
cannot either advance to them, nor retire 
back again to Lyons: — for how long the 
gentlemen, who are my fellow-travellers, 
and myself, shall languish in this state of 
vexatious captivity, Heaven and Earth 
surely know ; for it rains as if they were 
coming together to settle trie matter ; — I 
had an agreeable journey to Lyons ; and a 
joyous time there, — dining and supping 
every day at the Commandant's. — Lord 
F. W. I left there, and about a dozen Eng- 
lish. — If you see Lord Ossory, Lord Wil- 
liam Gordon, and my friend Mr. Crawford, 
remember me to them. If Wilkes is at 
Paris yet, I send him all kind wishes. — 
Present my compliments, as well as thanks, 

to my good friend Miss P ; and believe 

me, dear Sir, with all truth, yours, 

L. STERNE 



LETTER LXI. 

TO THE SAME. 

Turin, Nov. 28, 1765. 

Dear Sir, 
After many difficulties I have got here 
safe and sound, — though eight days in pass- 
ing the mountains of Savoy. — I am stopped 
here for ten days, by the whole country 
betwixt here and Milan being laid under 
water by continual rains; — but I am very 
haooy, and have found my way into a dozen 



houses already. — To-morrow I am to be 
presented to the King; and when that 
ceremony is over, I shall have my hands 
full of engagements. — No English here, but 
Sir James Macdonald, who meets with 
much respect, and Mr. Ogilby. — We are 
all together, and shall depart in peace to- 
gether. — My kind services to all. Pray 
forward the inclosed. 

Yours, most truly, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LXII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Turin, Nov. 28, 1765. 

Dear Sir, 
I am just leaving this place with Sir 
James Macdonald for Milan, &c. — We 
have spent a joyous fortnight here, and met 
with all kinds of honors; and with regret 
do we both hid adieu : — but health on my 
side, — and good sense on his, — say 'tis bet- 
ter to be at Rome ; — you say at, Paris ; — 
but you put variety out of the question. — 1 
entreat you to forward the inclosed to Mrs. 
Sterne. — My compliments to all friends: 
more particularly to those I most value (that 
includes Mr. F., if he is in Paris.) 
I am yours, most truly, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LXIII. 

TO THE SAME. 

Florence, Dec. 18, 1765. 

Dear Sir, 
I have been a month passing the plains 
of Lombardy, stopping in my way at Mi- 
lan, Parma, Placenza, and Bologna, — with 
weather as delicious as a kindly April in 
England; — and have been three days in 
crossing a part of the Apennines, covered 
with thick snow. — Sad transition ! — 1 
stay here three days to dine with our 

Plenipo Lords T d and 'C r; and 

in five days shall tread the Vatican, and 
be introduced to all tho. Saints in the 
Pantheon. — I stay but fourteen days to pay 
these civilities, and then decamp for Na 



364 



pies. — Pray send the inclosed to my wife 
and Becket's letter to London. 

Yours, truly, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LXIV. 

TO MISS STERNE. 

Naples, February 3, 17G6. 

My Dear Girl, 
Your letter, my Lydia, has made me 
both laugh and cry. Sorry am I that you 
are both so afflicted with the ague ; and by 
all means I wish you both to fly from Tours; 
because, I remember, it is situated between 
two rivers, la Loire and le Cher, which 
must occasion fogs, and damp unwholesome 
weather ; therefore, for the same reason, go 
not to Bourges en Bresse; 'tis as vile a 
place for agues. — I find myself infinitely 
better than I was, and hope to have added 
at least ten years to my life, by this journey 
to Italy; the climate is heavenly, and I find 
new principles of health in me, which I 
have been long a stranger to ; but trust me, 
my Lydia, I will find you out, wherever 
you are, in May. Therefore, I beg you to 
direct to me at Belloni's at Rome, that I 
may have some idea where you will be 
then. — The account you give me of Mrs. 

C is truly amiable ; I shall ever honor 

her. — Mr. C. is a diverting companion : — 
what he said of your little French admirer, 
was trulv droll. The Marquis de 



LETTERS. 

which I shall give you when we meet, as 



is an impostor, and not worthy of your ac- 
quaintance ; he only pretended to know me, 
to get introduced to your mother. 1 de- 
sire you will get your mother to write to 
Mr. C, that I may discharge every debt ; 
and then, my Lydia, if I live, the produce 
of my pen shall be yours : if Fate reserves 
m<> not that, the humane and good (part for 
thy lather's sake, part for thy own) will 
never abandon thee ! — If your mother's 
healtn will permit her to return with me 
to England, your summers I will render as 
agreeable as I can at Cox would ; your win- 
ters at York. — You know my publications 

call me to London. — If Mr. and Mrs. C 

are still at Tours, thank them from me for 
luPir cordiality to my wife and daughter. 
. nave purchased you some little trifles, 



proofs of affection from 

Your fond father, 

L. STERNE 



LETTER LXV. 



TO J- 



Esa. 



Naples, February 5, 170" 



My Dear H., 
'Tis an age since I have heard from you: 
— but as I read the London Chronicle, and 
find no tidings of your death, or that you 
are even at the point of it, I take it as I wish 
it, that you have got over thus much of the 
winter, free from the damps both of climate 
and spirits : — and here I am, as happy as a king 
after all, growing fat, sleek, and well liking; 
not improving in stature, but in breadth. — 
We have a jolly carnival of it ; nothing but 
operas, punchinelloes, festinoes, and mas- 
querades. We (that is, nous autres) are 
all dressing out for one this night at the 
Princess Francavivalla's, which is to be su- 
perb. The English dine with her (exclu- 
sively) : and so much for small chat, — ex- 
cept that I saw a little comedy last week, 
with more expression and spirit, and true 
character, than I shall see one hastily again. 
— I stay here till the Holy W T eek, which I 
shall pass at Rome, where I occupy myself 
a month : — my plan was to have gone from 
thence for a fortnight to Florence, and then 
by Leghorn to Marseilles directly home ; 
but am diverted from this by the repeated 
proposals of accompanying a gentleman who 
is returning by Venice, Vienna, Saxony, 
Berlin, and so by the Spa, and thence 
through Holland to England: — 'tis with 
Mr. E. I have known him these three 
years, and have been with him ever since 
I reached Rome : and as I know him to be 
a good-hearted young gentleman, I have no 
doubt of making it answer both his views 
and mine ; at least I am persuaded we shall 
return home together (as we set out) with 
friendship and good-will. — Write your next 
letter to me at Rome, and do me the following 
favor, if it lies in your way, which I think 
it does, to get me a letter of recommendation 
to our Ambassador (Lord Stormont) at Vi- 
enna. I have not the honor to be known to 



his Lordship; but Lords P , or FI , 

or twenty you better know, would write a 
certificate for me ; importing', that I am not 
fallen out of the clouds. If this will cost my 
cousin little trouble, do inclose it in your 
next letter to me at Belloni's. — You have 
left Skelton I trow a month, and I fear have 
nad a most sharp winter, if one may judge 
cf it from the severity of the weather here, 
and all over Italy, which exceeded any thing 
known, till within these three weeks, that 
the sun has been as hot as we could bear it. 
Give my kind services to my friends ; espe- 
cially to the household of faith : — my dear 
Garland, — to Gilbert, — to the worthy Colo- 
nel, — to Cardinal S , — ■ to my fellow- 
laborer Pantagruel. — Dear cousin Anthony, 
receive my kindest love and wishes. 
Yours affectionately, 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. Upon second thoughts, direct your 
next to me at Mr. W.'s, banker at Venice. 



LETTER LXVI. 

TO MR. FOLEY, AT PARIS. 

Naples, February 8, 1766. 

Dear Sir, 

I desire Mrs. Sterne may have what cash 
she wants, — if she has not received it before 
now: she sends me word she has been in 
want of cash these three weeks : be so kind 
as to prevent this uneasiness to her ; which 
is doubly so to me. I have made very little 
use of your letters of credit, having, since I 
left Paris, taken up no more money than about 
fifty Louis at Turin, as much at Rome, and 
a few ducats here ; and as I now travel from 
hence to Rome, Venice, through Vienna to 
Berlin, &c. with a gentleman of fortune, I 
shall draw for little more till my return ; so 
you will have always enough to spare for 
my wife. The beginning of March be so 
kind as to let her have a hundred pounds to 
begin her year with. 

There are a good many English here, 
very few in Rome, or other parts of Italy. 
The air of Naples agrees very well with 
me; — I shall return fat. — My friendship to 
all who honor me with theirs. — Adieu, my 
dear friend : — I am ever yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTERS. 36b 

LETTER LXVn. 

TO MR. PANCHAUD, AT PARIS. 

Naples, February 14, 1760 

Dear Sir, 
I wrote last week to you, to desire yov 
would let Mrs. Sterne have what money 
she wanted. — It may happen, as that letter 
went inclosed in one to her at Tours, that 
you will receive this first. I have made 
little use of your letters of credit, as you 
will see by that letter: nor shall I want 
much (if any) till you see me, as I travel 
now in company with a gentleman : — how- 
ever, as we return by Venice, Vienna, Ber- 
lin, &c. to the Spa, I should be glad if you 
will draw me a letter of credit upon some 
one at Venice, to the extent of fifty Louis ; 
— but I am persuaded I shall not want half 
of them : however, in case of sickness or ac- 
cidents, one would not go so long a route 
without money in one's pocket. — The bank- 
ers here are not so conscientious as my 
friend P. ; they would make me pay twelve 
per cent, if I was to get a letter here. I beg 
your letters, &c. may be inclosed to Mr. 
Watson at Venice, — where we shall be in 
the Ascension. I have received much bene- 
fit from the air of Naples ; — but quit it to be 
at Rome before the Holy Week. There are 
about five-and-twenty English here; — but 
most of them will be decamped in two 
months : — there are scarce a third of the 
number at Rome ; I suppose, therefore, that 
Paris is full. — My warmest wishes attend 
you, — with my love to Mr. F., and compli- 
ments to all. — I am, dear Sir, very faithfully, 
yours, 

L. STERNE. 

Sir James Macdonald is in the house with 
me, and is just recovering from a long and 
most cruel fit of the rheumatism. 



LETTER LXVIII. 



TO J- 



ESQ 



May 25, near Dijon. [1/66. j 

Dear Anthony, 

My desire of seeing both my wife and 
girl, has turned me out of mv road towards 
31* 



3t>6 



LETTERS. 



a delicious chateau of the Countess of M , 

where I have been patriarching it these 
seven days with her Ladyship, and half 
a dozen of very handsome and agreeable 
ladies. — Her Ladyship has the best of 
hearts : — a valuable present, not given to 
every one. To-morrow, with regret, I shall 
quit this agreeable circle, and post it night 
and day to Paris, where I shall arrive in 
two days, and just wind myself up, when I 
am there, enough to roll on to Calais ; — so 
I hope to sup with you the King's birth-day, 
according to a plan of sixteen days' standing. 
Never man has been such a wildgoose chase 
after a wife as I have been. — After having 
sought her in five or six different towns, I 
found her at last in Franche Compte. — Poor 
woman ! she was very cordial, &c. and begs 
to stay another year or two. — My Lydia 
pleases me much. — I found her greatly im- 
proved in every thing I wished her. — I am 
most unaccountably well, and most unac- 
countably nonsensical; — 'tis at least a proof 
of good spirits ; which is a sign and token 
given me in these latter days, that I must 
take up again the pen. In faith, I think I 
shall die with it in my hand ; but I shall live 
these ten years, my Anthony, notwithstand- 
ing the fears of my wife, whom I left most 
melancholy on that account. This is a de- 
licious part of the world ; most celestial 
weather, and we lie all day, without damps, 
upon the grass,— and that is the whole of 
it, except the inner man (for her Ladyship 
is not stingy of her wine) is inspired twice 
a day wifeh the best Burgundy that grows 
upon the mountains which terminate our 
lands here. Surely, you will not have de- 
camped to Crazy Castle before I reach town. 
The summer here is set in in good earnest : 
— 'tis more than we can say for Yorkshire. 
I hope to hear a good tale of your alum- 
works. Have you no other works in hand 1 
I do not expect to hear from you ; so God 
prosper you, and all your undertakings. — I 
am, my dear cousin, 

Most affectionately yours, 



Remember me to Mr. G- 
, the Colonel, &c. 



L. STERNE. 



-, Cardinal 



LETTER LXIX. 

TO MR. PANCHAUD, AT PARTS. 

York, June 28, 1766 

Dear Sir, 
I wrote last week to Mr. Becket to dis 
charge the balance due to you ; — and I have 
received a letter from him, telling me, that 
if you will draw upon him for one hundred 
and sixty pounds, he will punctually pay it 
to your order ; — so send the draughts when 
you please. — Mrs. Sterne writes me word, 
she wants fifty pounds ; which I desire you 
will let her have : I will take care to remit 
it to your correspondent. I have such an 
entire confidence in my wife, that she 
spends as little as she can, though she is 
confined to no particular sum: — her ex- 
penses will not exceed three hundred 
pounds a year, unless by ill-health or a jour- 
ney, — and I am very willing she should 
have it ; — and you may rely, in case it ever 
happens that she should draw for fifty or a 
hundred pounds extraordinary, that it and 
every demand shall be punctually paid, — 
and with proper thanks; and for this the 
whole Shandean family are ready to stand 
security. 'Tis impossible to tell you how 
sorry I was that my affairs hurried me so 
quick through Paris, as to deprive me of 
seeing my old friend Mr. Foley, and of the 
pleasure I proposed in being made known 
to his better half; — but I have a probability 
of seeing him this winter. Adieu, dear 
Sir, and believe me 

Most cordially yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LXX. 
TO MR. a 

Coxwould, July 23, 17fi6- 

Dear Sir, 

One might be led to think that there is & 
fatality regarding us: — we make appoint- 
ments to meet; and for these two years 
have not seen each other's face but twice ; 
— we must try and do better for the f jture. 
Having sought you with more zeal than 



LETTERS. 



3G7 



C sought the Lord, in order to deliver 

you the books you bade me purchase for 
you at Paris, — I was forced to pay carriage 
for them from London down to York ; — but 
as I shall neither charge you the books nor 
the carriage, — 'tis not worth talking about. 
Never man, my dear Sir, has had a more 
agreeable tour than your Yorick ; — and at 
present I am in my peaceful retreat, writing 
the ninth volume* of Tristram. I shall 
publish but one this year; and the next I 
shall begin a new work of four volumes, 
which when finished, I shall continue Tris- 
tram with fresh spirit. What a difference 
of scene here ! But, with a disposition to 
be happy, 'tis neither this place nor t'other 
that renders us the reverse. In short, each 
man's happiness depends upon himself: — 
he is a fool if he does not enjoy it. 

What are you about, dear S ] Give 

me some account of your pleasures. — You 
had better come to me for a fortnight, and 
I will show, or give you (if needful) a 
practical dose of my philosophy ; but I hope 
you do not want it ; — if you did, 'twould 
be the office of a friend to give it. Will 
not even our races tempt you ] You see I 
use all arguments. — Believe me yours most 
truly, 

L STERNE. 



LETTER LXXI. 

TO MR. PANCHAUD, AT PARIS. 

Coxwould, Sept. 21, 1766. 

My Dear Friend, 
If Mrs. Sterne should draw upon you for 
fifty Louis d'ors, be so kind as to remit her 
the money; — and pray be so good as not 
to draw upon Mr. Becket for it (as he owes 
me nothing) but favor me with the draught, 
which I will pay to Mr. Selwin. A young 
nobleman is now negotiating a jaunt with 
me for six weeks, about Christmas, to the 
Fauxbourg de St. Germain. — I should like 
much to be with you for so long; and if my 
wife should grow worse (having had a very 
poor account of her in my daughter's last) 
I cannot think of her being without me : — 
and however expensive the journey would 



• Alluding to the first edition. 



be, I would fly to Avignon to administer 
consolation to both her and my poor girl. — 
Wherever I am, believe me, dear Sir, 
Yours, 

L. STERNE. 

My kind compliments to Mr. Foley. 
Though I have not the honor of knowing 
his rib, I see no reason why I may not pre- 
sent all due respects to the better half of sc 
old a friend, which I do by these presents 
— with my friendliest wishes to Miss P. 



LETTER LXXII. 

TO MR. FOLEY, AT PARI3. f 

Coxwould, Oct. 25, 1766. 

My Dear Foley, 
I desired you would be so good as to 
remit to Mrs. Sterne fifty Louis, a month 
ago. — I dare say you have done it; — but 
her illness must have cost her a good deal : 
— therefore, having paid the last fifty pounds 
into Mr. Selwin's hands, I beg you to send 
her thirty guineas more, — for which I send 
a batik-bill to Mr. Becket by this post ;— 
but surely, had I not done so, you wo ild no 
stick at it; — for be assured, my dear Foley 
that the First Lord of the Treasury is nei- 
ther more able nor more willing (nor per- 
haps half so punctual) in repaying with 
honor all I ever can be in your books. — My 
daughter says her mother is very ill, — and 
I fear, going fast down, by all accounts : — 
'tis melancholy in her situation to want iny 
aid that is in my power to give. — Do w rite 
to her; — and believe me, with all compli- 
ments to your Hotel, 

Yours very truly, 

L. STERN* 



LETTER LXXIII. 

TO MR. PANCHAUD. 

York, November 25, 1766. 

Dear Sir, 
I just received yours ; and am glad tha» 
the balance of accounts is now paid to you. 
— Thus far all goes well. — I have received 
a letter from my daughter with the pleasing 
tidings that she thinks he mother out of 



308 LETTERS. 

danger, — and that the air of the country is 
delightful (excepting the winds) ; but the 
description of the chateau my wife has 
hired is really pretty : — on the side of the 
Fountain of Vaucluse,— with seven rooms 
of a floor, half furnished with tapestry, 
half with blue taffety, the permission to fish, 
and to have game; so many partridges a 
week, &c. ; and the price guess ! Six- 
teen guineas a year! — there's for you, P. 
About the latter end of next month, my wife 
will have occasion for a hundred guineas; 
— and pray be so good, my dear Sir, as to 
give orders that she may not be disappoint- 
ed : — she is going to spend the Carnival at 
Marseilles at Christmas. — I shall be in Lon- 
don by Christmas-week, and then shall 
balance this remittance to Mrs. S. with Mr. 

S . I am going to lie-in of another child 

of the Shandaic procreation, in town. — I 
hope you wish me a safe delivery. — I fear 
my friend Mr. F. will have left town before 
I get there. — Adieu, dear Sir. — I wish you 
every thing in this world which will do you 
good, for I am, with unfeigned truth, 
Yours, 

L. STERNE. 

Make my compliments acceptable to the 
good and worthy Baron d'Holbach, — Miss 
P. &c. &c. 



LETTER LXXIV. 

FROM IGNATIUS SANCHO 
TO MR. STERNE. 

[1766.] 

Reverend Sir, 
It would be an insult on your humanity 
(or, perhaps, look like it) to apologize for the 
liberty I am taking. — I am one of those 
people whom the vulgar and illiberal call 
Negroes. — The first part of my life was 
rather unlucky, as I was placed in a family 
who judged ignorance the best and only se- 
curity for obedience. A little reading and 
writing I got by unwearied application. — 
The latter part of my life has been, through 
God's blessing, truly fortunate, — having 
spent it in the service of one of the best 
and greatest families in the kingdom. — My 
chief pleasure has been books : — Philan- 
thropy I auore — How very much, good Sir, 
»m I (amongst millions) indebted to you for 



the character of your amiable uncle Toby . 
— I declare I would walk ten miles in the 
dog-days, to shake hands with the honest 
Corporal. — Your sermons have touched me 
to the heart, and, I hope, have amended it ; 
which brings me to the point. — In your 
tenth discourse, is this very affecting pas- 
sage : — " Consider how great a part of our 
" species, in all ages down to this, have been 
" trod under the feet of cruel and capricious 
"tyrants, who would neither hear their 
" cries, nor pity their distresses ! — Consider 
" slavery, — what it is, — how bitter a draught, 
" and how many millions are made to drink 
"of it!" — Of all my favorite authors, not 
one has drawn a tear in favor of my miser- 
able black brethren, — excepting yourself, 
and the humane author of Sir Geo. Ellison. 
— I think you will forgive me, — I am sure 
you will applaud me, — for beseeching you 
to give one half-hour's attention to slavery, 
as it is this day practised in our West In- 
dies. — That subject handled in your striking 
manner, would ease the yoke (perhaps of 
many ;) but if only of one, — gracious God ! 
what a feast to a benevolent heart! and 
sure I am, you are an Epicurean in acts of 
charity. — You, who are universally read, 
and as universally admired, — you could not 
fail. — Dear Sir, think in me you behold the 
uplifted hands of thousands of my brothei 
Moors. Grief (you pathetically observe) is 
eloquent : figure to yourself their attitudes, 
hear their supplicating addresses! — alas! 
you cannot refuse. Humanity must comply ; 
— in which hope, I beg permission to sub. 
scribe myself, 

Reverend Sir, &c. 

i. s 



LETTER LXXV. 

FROM MR. STERNE 
TO IGNATIUS SANCHO. 

Coxwould, July 27, 1766. 

There is a strange coincidence, Sancho, 
in the little events (as well as in the greai 
ones) of this world ; for I had been writing 
a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless 
poor negro girl ; and my eyes had scarce 
done smarting with it, when your letter of 
recommendation, in behalf of so many of 



LETTERS. 



ner brethren and sisters, came to me ; — 
but why her brethren ? — or yours, Sancho 
—any more than mine? It is by the finest 
tints and most insensible gradations that 
Nature descends from the fairest face about 
St. James's to the sootiest complexion in 
Africa. — At which tint of these is it, that 
the ties of blood are to cease ? and how 
many shades must we descend lower still 
in the scale, ere mercy is to vanish with 
them? But 'tis no uncommon thing, my 
good Sancho, for one half of the world to 
use the other half of it like brutes, and then 
endeavor to make them so. For my own 
part, I never look westward (when I am in a 
pensive mood at least) but I think of the 
burdens which our brothers and sisters are 
there carrying; and, could I ease their 
shoulders from one ounce of them, I declare 
I would set out this hour upon a pilgrimage 
to Mecca for their sakes; — which, by the 
bye, Sancho, exceeds your walk often miles 
in about the same proportion that a visit of 
humanity should one of mere form. — How- 
ever, if you meant my uncle Toby more, he 
is your debtor. — If I can weave the tale I 
have wrote into the work I am about, — 'tis 
at the service of the afflicted, — and a much 
greater matter : for, in serious truth, it casts 
a sad shade upon the world, that so great a 
part of it are, and have been so long, bound 
in chains of darkness, and in chains of 
misery ; and I cannot but both respect and 
felicitate you, that, by so much laudable 
diligence, you have broke the one; — and 
that, by falling into the hands of so good 
and merciful a family, Providence has res- 
cued you from the other. 

And so, good-hearted Sancho, adieu ! and, 
oelieve me, I will not forget your letter. 
Yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LXXVI. 

TO MR. W. 

Coxwould, Dec. 23, 1766. 

Thanks, my dear W , for your letter. 

1 am just preparing to come and greet you 

M><] many other friends in town. — I have 

2 W 



drained my inkstandish to the bottom ; and, 
after I have published, shall set my facfl, 
not towards Jerusalem, but towards thn 
Alps. — I find I must once more fly fiom 
death whilst I have strength. — I shall gc to 
Naples, and see whether the air of tha* 
place will not set this poor frame to rights. 
— As to the project of getting a bear to 
lead, I think I have enough to do to gov- 
ern myself; — and however profitable it 
might be (according to your opinion) I am 
sure it would be unpleasurable. — Few are 
the minutes of life; and I do not think that 
I have any to throw away on any one being. 
— I shall spend nine or ten months in Italy, 
and call upon my wife and daughter in 
France, at my return ; — so shall be back by 
the King's birth-day. — What a project ! — 
and now, my dear friend, am I going to 
York ; not for the sake of society, nor to 
walk by the side of the muddy Ouse, but 
to recruit myself of the most violent spitting 
of blood that ever mortal man experienced; 
because I had rather (in case it is ordained 
so) die there than in a post-chaise on the 
road. — If the amour of my uncle Toby do 
not please you, I am mistaken ; and so with 
a droll story I will finish this letter. 

A sensible friend of mine, with whom, 
not long ago, I spent some hours in conver- 
sation, met an apothecary (an acquaintance 
of ours). — The latter asked him how he 
did ? — "Why ill, very ill : I have been with 
" Sterne, who has given me such a dose of 
" Attic Salt, that I am in a fever." — 'Attic 
'salt, Sir! Attic salt! I have Glauber salt, 
' I have Epsom Salt in my shop, &c. — Oh ! 
' I suppose 'tis some French salt. — I wonder 
' you would trust his report of the medicine : 
'he cares not what he takes himself.' — 1 
fancy I see you smile. — I long to be able to 
be in London, and embrace my friends 
there ; — and shall enjoy myself a week or 
ten days at Paris with my friends, particu- 
larly the Baron d'Holbach, and the rest ot 
the joyous set. — As to the females ; — no, I 
will not say a word about them; — only 1 
hate borrowed characters, taken up as a 
woman does her shift, for the purpose snt» 
intends to effectuate. Adieu, adieu. — 1 ain 
yours, whilst 

L. STERN B. 



370 



LETTERS. 



LETTER LXXVIL 



TO MR. PANCHAUD, AT PARIS. 

^ondon, Feb. 13, 1767. 

Dear P , 

1 paid yesterday (by Mr. Becket) a hun- 
dred guineas, or pounds. I forget which, to 
Mr. Selwin: — but you must remit to Mrs. 
Sterne, at Marseilles, a hundred Louis be- 
fore she leaves that place, which will be in 
Jess than three weeks. Have you got the 
ninth volume of Shandy?* — it is liked the 
best of all here. — I am going to publish a 
Sentimental Journey through France and 
Italy. — The undertaking is protected and 
highly encouraged by all our noblesse ; — 'tis 
subscribed for at a great rate ; — 'twill be an 
original, in large quarto; the subscription 
half a guinea. — If you can procure me the 
honor of a few names of men of science or 
fashion, I shall thank you ; — they will ap- 
pear in good company, as all the nobility 
here almost have honored me with their 
names. — My kindest remembrance to Mr. 
Foley. — Respects to Baron d'Holbach, and 
believe me ever, ever yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LXXVIII. 

TO MISS STERNE. 

Old Bond Street, Feb. 2S, 1767. 

Am) so, my Lydia, thy mother and thy- 
self are returning back again from Mar- 
seilles to the banks of the Sorgue, — and 
tnere thou wilt sit and fish for trouts. — I 
■ envy you the sweet situation. — Petrarch's 
tomb I should like to pay a sentimental visit 
to. — The Fountain of Vaucluse, by thy de- 
scription, must be delightful. — I am also 
much pleased with the account you give 
me of the Abbe de Sade ; — you find great 
comfort in such a neighbor. — I am glad he 
is sr good as to correct thy translation of 
my Sermons. — Dear girl, go on, and make 
me a present of thy work : — but why not 
the House of Mourning 1 'tis one of the best. 
-I long to receive the Life of Petrarch and 
bia Laura, by your Abbe ; but I am out of 



* Alluding to the first edition. 



all patience with the answer the Marquis 
made the Abbe ; 'twas truly coarse ; and 
I wonder he bore it with any Christian 
patience. — But to the subject of your letter. 
I do not wish to know who was the busy 
fool who made your mother uneasy about 

Mrs. : 'tis true, I have a friendship for 

her, but not to infatuation. — I believe I have 
judgment enough to discern hers, and every 
woman's faults. I honor thy mother for 
her answer. — That she wished not to be 
informed; and begged him to drop the 
subject. — Why do you say that your mother 
wants money 1 Whilst I have a shilling, 
shall you not have ninepence out of it? — I 
think, if I have my enjoyments, I ought not 
to grudge you yours. — I shall not begin my 
Sentimental Journey till I get to Coxwould. 
— I have laid a plan for something new. 
quite out of the beaten track. I wish I had 
you with me, and I would introduce you to 
one of trie most amiable and gentlest of 
beings, whom I have just been with ; — not 

Mrs. , but a Mrs. J , the wife of a* 

worthy a man as I ever met with ; I esteem 
them both. He possesses every manly vir- 
tue ; — honor and bravery ai\e his character- 
istics, which have distinguished him nobly 
in several instances. I shall make you 
better acquainted with his character, by 
sending Orme's History, with the books 
you desired, — and it is well worth youi 
reading; for Orme is an elegant writer, 
and a just one ; he pays no man a compli- 
ment at the expense of truth. — Mrs. J 

is kind and friendly ; of a sentimental turn 
of mind, and so sweet a disposition, that she 
is too good for the world she lives in. — Just 
God ! if all were like her, what a life would 
this be ! — Heaven, my Lydia, for some wise 
purpose, has created different beings. — I 
wish my dear child knew her; thou art 
worthy of her friendship, and she already 
loves thee ; for I sometimes tell her what 
I feel . for thee. — This is a long letter. — 
Write soon, and never let your letters be 
studied ones; write naturally, and then 
you will write well. — I hope your mother 
has got quite well of her ague. — I have 
sent her some of Huxham's tincture of the 
bark. — I will order you a guitar, since the 
other is broke. — Believe me, my Lydia, 
that I am yours affectionately. 

L. STEKNE 



LETTERS. 



371 



LETTER LXXIX. 

TO MR. PANCHAUD, AT PARIS. 

London, Feb. 27, 1767. 

Dear Sir, 
My daughter begs a present of me, and 
you must know I can deny her nothing. — 
It must be strung with cat-gut and of five 
chords, si chiama in Italiano la chitera di 
cinque corde. She cannot get such a thing 
at Marseilles ; at Paris one may have every 
thing. Will you be so good to my girl as 
to make her happy in this affair, by getting 
some musical body to buy one, and send it 
her to Avignon, directed to Monsieur 
Teste! — I wrote last week to desire you 

would remit Mrs. S a hundred Louis : 

'twill be all, except the guitar, I shall owe 
you. Send me your account, and I will 
pay Mr. Selwin. — Direct to me at Mr. 
Becket's. All kind respects to my friend 
Mr. F. and your sister. 

Yours cordially, 

L. STERNE. 



be offered to yours. The others came from 
the head : I am more indifferent about thei 
reception. 

I know not how it comes about, but lam 
half in love with you ; I ought to be wholly 
so ; for I never valued (or saw more good 
qualities to value) or thought more of one 
of your sex than of you ; so adieu. 
Yours faithfully, 

tf not affectionately, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER LXXXI. 



TO THE SAME. 



♦ LETTER LXXX * 

TO ELIZA.t 

Eliza will receive my books with this. 
The sermons came all hot from the heart. 
I wish that I could give them any title to 



* This and the nine following Letters have no dates 
to them, but were evidently written in the months of 
March and April, 17(57. They are therefore here placed 
together. 

t The Editor of the first publication of Mr. Sterne's 
Letters to Eliza, gives the following account of this 
Lady ;— "Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, wife of Daniel Dra- 
" per, Esq. Counsellor at Bombay, and at present (i. e. 
" in 1775,) chief of the factory at Surat, a gentleman 
" very much respected in that quarter of the globe. — 
*' She is by birth an East Indian ; but the circumstance 
'of being born in the country, not proving sufficient 
to defend her delicate frame against the heats of 
that burning climate, she came to England for the 
recovery of her health, when, by accident, she be- 
" came acquainted with Mr. Sterne. He immediately 
" discovered in hen a mind so congenial with his own, 
"so enlightened, so refined, and so tender, that their 
'mutual attraction presently joined them in the 
'closest union that purity could possibly admit of: 
'* he loved her as his friend, and prided in her as his 
"pupil: all her concerns became presently his; her 
'health, her circumstances, her reputation, her chil- 
'dien, were his; his fortune, his time, his country, 
* were at her disposal, so far as the sacrifice of all or 



I cannot rest, Eliza, though I shall call 
on you at half past twelve, till I know how 
you do. — May thy dear face smile, as thou 
risest like the sun of this morning. I was 
much grieved, to hear of your alarming in- 
disposition yesterday; and disappointed too, 
at not being let in. — Remember, my dear, 
that a friend has the same right as a phy- 
sician. The etiquettes of this town (you'll 
say) say otherwise. — No matter. Delicacy 
and propriety do not always consist in ob- 
serving their rigid doctrines. 

I am going out to breakfast, but shall be 
at my lodgings by eleven : when I hope to 
read a single line under thy own hand, that 
thou art better, and wilt be glad to see thy 
Bramin. 

9 o'clock. 



" any of these might, in his opinion, contribute to her 
" real happiness. If it is asked, whether the glowing 
" heat of Mr. Sterne's affection never transported him 
" to a flight beyond the limits of pure Platonism? the 
" publisher will not take upon him absolutely to deny 
" it : but this, he thinks, so far from leaving any stain 
" upon that gentleman's memory, that it, perhaps, in- 
" eludes his fairest encomium ; since to cherish the 
" seeds of piety and chastity in a heart which the pas- 
" si one are interested to corrupt, must be allowed to 
" be the noblest effort of a soul fraught and fortified 
" with the justest sentiments of religion and virtue." 
After reading these letters, the curiosity of the pub- 
lic will be naturally excited to inquire concerning 
the fate of the Lady to whom they are addressed. To 
this question, it will be sufficient to answer, that site 
has been dead some years, and that it might give pain, 
to many worthy persons, if the circumstances which 
attended the latter part of her life were disclosed u 
they are generally said to have reflected no credi 
either on her prudence or discretion. 



3*\> 



LETTERS. 



LETTER LXXXII. 



TO THE SAME. 



I got thy letter last night, Eliza, on my 
return from Lord Bathurst's, where I dined, 
and where I was heard (as I talked of thee 
an hour without intermission) with so much 
pleasure and attention, that the good old 
Lord toasted your health three different 
times; and now he is in his eighty-fifth 
year, says he hopes to live long enough to 
be introduced, as a friend, to my fair Indian 
disciple, and to see her eclipse all other 
Nabobesses as much in wealth as she does 
already in exterior and (what is far better) 
in interior merit. I hope so too. This no- 
bleman is an old friend of mine. — You 
know he was always the protector of men 
of wit and genius ; and has had those of 
the last century, Addison, Steele, Pope, 
Swift, Prior, &c. &.c. always at his table. 
— The manner in which his notice began 
of me, was as singular as it was polite. — 
He came up to me, one day, as I was at the 
Princess of Wales's court. " I want to 
know you, Mr. Sterne; but it is fit you 
should know also, who it is that wishes 
this pleasure. You have heard, continued 
he, of an old Lord Bathurst, of whom your 
Popes and Swifts have sung and spoken so 
much. I have lived my life with geniuses 
of that cast; but have survived them; and 
despairing ever to find their equals, it is 
some years since I have closed my accounts, 
and shut up my books, with thoughts of 
never opening them again ; but you have 
kindled a desire in me of opening them 
once more before . die; which I now do; 
so go home and dine with me." — This no- 
bleman, I say, is a prodigy; for at eighty- 
five he has all the wit and promptness of a 
man of thirty, — a disposition to be pleased, 
and a power to please others beyond what- 
ever I knew: added to which, a man of 
learning, courtesy, and feeling. 

He heard me talk of thee, Eliza, with un- 
common satisfaction ; — for there was only 
a third person, and of sensibility, with us : 
— and a most sentimental afternoon, till 
nine o'clock, have we passed. But thou, 
Eliza, wert the star that conducted and en- 
liven'd the discourse : — and when I talked 

a. c i.u i-n j*j 4. *u .en - j * Miss Light afterwards married George Stratton, 

not of thee, still didst thou fill my mind, „ , . . ., -• _ _ - .. „ 

' J ' Esq. late in the service of the East India Company 

And warmed every thought I Uttered ; for I at Madras. She is since dead. 



am not ashamed to acknowledge, I great.y 
miss thee. — Best of all girls ! the suffer- 
ings I have sustained the whole night on 
account of thine, Eliza, are beyond my 
power of words. — Assuredly does Heaven 
give strength proportioned to the weight 
he lays upon us! Thou hast been bowed 
down, my child, with every burden that 
sorrow of heart and pain of body could 
inflict upon a poor being; and still thou 
tellest me, thou art beginning to get ease ; 
—thy fever gone, thy sickness, the pain in 
thy side vanishing also. — May every evil so 
vanish that thwarts Eliza's happiness, or 
but awakens thy fears for a moment ! — Fear 
nothing, my dear! — hope everything; — 
and the balm of this passion will shed its 
influence on thy health, and make thee en- 
joy a spring of youth and cheerfulness more 
than thou hast hardly yet tasted ! 

And so thou hast fixed thy Bramin's por- 
trait over thy writing-desk; and wilt con- 
sult it in all doubts and difficulties. — Grate- 
ful and good girl! Yorick smiles contentedly 
over all thou dost : his picture does not do 
justice to his own complacency ! 

Thy sweet little plan and distribution of 
thy time, — how worthy of thee!* Indeed, 
Eliza, thou leavest me nothing to direct thee 
in ! thou leavest me nothing to require, — 
nothing to ask, — but a continuation of that 
conduct which won my esteem, and has 
made me thy friend for ever ! 

May the roses come quick back to thy 
cheeks, and the rubies to thy lips! But 
trust my declaration, Eliza, that thy hus- 
band (if he is the good feeling man I wish 
him) will press thee to him with more honest 
warmth and affection, and kiss thy pale, poor 
dejected face with more transport than he 
would be able to do in the best bloom of all 
thy beauty ! — and so he ought, or I pity 
him. He must have strange feelings if he 
knows not the value of such a creature as 
thou art! 

I am glad Miss Light* goes with you. 
She may relieve you from many anxious 
moments. — I am glad your ship-mates are 
friendly beings. You could least dispense 
with what is contrary to your own nature, 
— which is soft and gentle, Eliza. — It would 






civilize savages ! — though pity were it thou 
should'st be tainted with the office ! How 
canst thou make apologies for thy last letter ? 
'tis most delicious to me, for the very reason 
vou excuse it. Write to me, my child, only 
such. Let them speak the easy carelessness 
of a heart that opens itself any how, and 
every how, to a man you ought to esteem 
and trust. Such, Eliza, I write to thee; — 
and so I should ever live with thee, most 
artlessly, most affectionately, if Providence 
permitted thy residence in the same section 
of the globe : — for I am, all that honor and 
affection can make me, 

THY BRAMIN. 



LETTER LXXXIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



I write this, Eliza, at Mr. James's whilst 
he is dressing, and the dear girl, his wife, 
is writing beside me, to thee. — I got your 
melancholy billet before we sat down to 
dinner. 'Tis melancholy indeed, my dear, 
to hear so piteous an account of thy sick- 
ness ! Thou art encountered with evils 
enow, without that additional weight! I 
fear it will sink thy poor soul, and body 
with it, past recovery : — Heaven supply 
thee with fortitude ! We have talked of 
nothing but thee, Eliza, and of thy sweet 
virtues and endearing conduct, all the after- 
noon. Mrs. James and thy Bramin have 
mixed their tears a hundred times, in speak- 
ing of thy hardships, thy goodness, and thy 
graces. — The ****s, by heavens, are worth- 
less ! I have heard enough to tremble at 
the articulation of the name ! How could 
you, Eliza, leave them (or suffer them to 
leave you rather) with impressions the least 
favorable ? I have told thee enough to plant 
disgust against their treachery to thee, to 
the last hour of thy life ! Yet still thou 
t.oldest Mrs. James at last, that thou believ- 
est they affectionately love thee. — Her deli- 
cacy to my Eliza, and true regard to her 
^ase of mind, have saved thee from hearing 
more glaring proofs of their baseness. For 
God's sake, write not to them ; nor foul thy 
fair character with such polluted hearts : — 
They love thee ! what proof? Is it their ac# 



LETTERS. 373 

tions that say sol or their zeal for those at- 
tachments, which do thee honor, and make 
thee happy ? or their tenderness for thy 
fame? No; but they weep, and say tender 
things. — Adieu to all such for ever. Mrs. 
James's honest heart revolts against the 
idea of ever returning them one visit. — I 
honor her, and I honor thee, for almost 
every act of thy life, but this blind parti- 
ality for an unworthy being. 

Forgive my zeal, dear girl, and allow me 
a right which arises only out of that fund 
of affection I have, and shall preserve for 
thee to the hour of my death ! Reflect, 
Eliza, what are my motives for perpetually 
advising thee? think whether I can have 
any, but what proceed from the cause I 
have mentioned ! I think you are a very 
deserving woman ; and that you want no- 
thing but firmness and a better opinion of 
yourself, to be the best female character I 
know. I wish I could inspire you with a 
share of that vanity your enemies lay to 
your charge (though to me it has never 
been visible) because I think, in a well- 
turned mind it will produce good effects. 

I probably shall never see you more : yet 
I flatter myself, you'll sometimes think of 
me with pleasure ! because you must be 
convinced I love you, and so interest myself 
in your rectitude, that I had rather hear of 
any evil befalling you, than your want of 
reverence for yourself. I had not power to 
keep this remonstrance in my breast. — It's 
now out; so adieu. Heaven watch over my 
Eliza ! 

Thine, 

YORICK. 



LETTER LXXXIV. 



TO THE SAME. 



To whom should Eliza apply in her (lis 
tress, but to her friend who loves herj why 
then, my dear, do you apologize for employ- 
ing me? Yorick would be offended, and 
with reason, if you ever sent commissions 
to another which he cnuld execute. I have 
been with Zumps ; and your piano-forte 
must be tuned from the brass middle string 
of your guitar, which is C. — 1 have got 
32 



374 



LETTERS. 



you a hammer too, and pair of pliers to 
twist your wire with; and may every one 
of them, my dear, vibrate sweet comfort to 
my hopes ! I have bought you ten handsome 
brass screws, to hang- your necessaries upon : 
I purchased twelve ; but stole a couple from 
you to put up in my own cabin, at Cox- 
would : I shall never hang 1 , nor take my hat 



LETTER LXXXV. 



TO THE SAME. 



My Dearest Eliza, 

•I began a new journal this morning-; you 
shall see it ; for if I live not till your re- 
turn to England, I will leave it you as a 



off one of them, but I shall think of you. 1 1 legacy. 'Tis a sorrowful page ; but I will 



have bought thee, moreover, a couple of 
iron screws, which are more to be depended 
on than brass, for the globes. 

[ have written also to Mr. Abraham 
Walker, pilot at Deal, that I had dispatched 
these in a packet directed to his care; which 
I desired he would seek after the moment 
the Deal machine arrived. I have, more- 
over, given him directions what sort of an 
arm-chair you would want, and have di- 
rected him to purchase the best that Deal 
could afford ; and take it, with the parcel, 
fn the first boat that went off. Would I 
could, Eliza, so supply all thy wants, and all 
thy wishes ! — it would be a state of happi- 
ness to me. — The journal is as it should be, 
all but its contents. Poor, dear, patient be- 
ing ! I do more than pity you ; for I think 
I lose both firmness and philosophy — as I 
figure to myself your distresses. Do not 
think I spoke last night with too much as- 
perity of **** ; there was cause ; and be- 
sides, a good heart ought not to love a bad 
one ; and, indeed, cannot. But, adieu to the 
ungrateful subject. 

I have been this morning to see Mrs. 
James : she loves thee tenderly and un- 
feignedly. She is alarmed for thee : — she 
says thou looked'st most ill and melancholy 
on going away. She pities thee. I shall 
visit her every Sunday while I am in town. 
— As this may be my last letter, I earnestly 
bid thee farewell. May the God of kindness 
be kind to thee, and approve himself thy 
protector, now thou art defenceless ! And, 
lor thy daily comfort, bear in thy mind this 
truth, That whatever measure of sorrow 
and distress is thy portion, it will be repaid 
to thee in a full measure of happiness, by 
the Being thou hast wisely chosen for thy 



eternal friend. 

Farewell, farewell, Eliza! Whilst I live, 
jount upon me as the most warm and dis- 
»terested of earthly f-iends. 

YORICK. 



write cheerful ones ; and could I write let- 
ters to thee, they should be cheerful ones 
too : but few, I fear, will reach thee ! How- 
ever, depend upon receiving something of 
the kind by every post; till then, thou 
wavest thy hand, and bid'st me write no 
more. 

Tell me how you are ; and what sort of 
fortitude Heaven inspires you with. How 
are you accommodated, my dear? — is all 
right ] Scribble away, any thing and every 
thing to me. Depend upon seeing me at 
Deal, with the Jameses, should you be de- 
tained there by contrary winds. — Indeed, 
Eliza, I should with pleasure fly to you, 
could I be the means of rendering you any 
service, or doing you kindness. Gracious 
and merciful God ! consider the anguish of 
a poor girl ! — Strengthen and preserve her 
in all the shocks her frame must be exposed 
to! She is now without a protector, but 
thee ! Save her from all accidents of a dan- 
gerous element, and give her comfort at 
the last ! 

My prayer, Eliza, I hope, is heard ! for 
the sky seems to smile upon me, as I look 
up to it. I am just returned from our deai 
Mrs. James's, where I have been talking 
of thee for three hours. — She has got your 
picture, and likes it: but Marriot, and some 
other judges, agree that mine is the better, 
and expressive of a sweeter character. — 
But what is that to the original ? yet I ac- 
knowledge that hers is a picture for' the 
world, and mine is calculated only to please 
a very sincere friend, or sentimental phi- 
losopher. In the one, you are dressed in 
smiles, and with all the advantages of silks, 
pearls, and ermine ; — in the other, simple 
as a vestal, — appearing the good girl Na- 



ture made you ; — which, to me, conveys an 
idea of more unaffected sweetness than 
Mrs. Draper, habited for conquest in a 
; 'birth-day suit, with her countenance ani- 
mated, and her dimples visible. It" J re» 



LETTERS. 



375 



member right, Eliza, you endeavored to 
collect every charm of your person into 
your face, with more than common rare, 
\he day you sat for Mrs. James. — Your 



I beheld in all my travels, are manifestly 

injured by the affected leer of the one, and 
strange appearance of the other ; owing to 
the attitude of the head, which is a proof 



color, too, brightened ; and your eyes shone of the artist's or your friend's false taste 
with more than usual brilliancy. I then j The ****s, who verify the character I once 



requested you to come simple and una- 
dorned when you sat for me; — knowing 



gave of teasing, or sticking like pitch 01 
bird-lime, sent a card that they would wait 



(as I see with unprejudiced eyes) that you on Mrs. **** on Friday. — She sent back 



could receive no addition from the silk- 
worm's aid, or jeweller's polish. Let me 
now tell you a truth, which I believe I have 
jttered before. — When I first saw you, I 
beheld you as an object of compassion, and 
as a very plain woman. The mode of your 
■^ress (though fashionable) disfigured you. 
— But nothing now could render you such, 
but the being solicitous to make yourself 
admired as a handsome one. — You are not 
handsome, Eliza, nor is yours a face that 
will please the tenth part of your behold- 
ers, — but are something more ; for I scruple 
not to tell you, I never saw so intelligent, 
so animated, so good a countenance ; nor 
ever was there, nor ever will be, that man 
of sense, tenderness, and feeling, in your 
company three hours, that was not, or will 
not be, your admirer or friend, in conse- 
quence of it; that is, if you assume, or as- 
sumed, no character foreign to your own, 
but appeared the artless being Nature de- 
signed you for. A something in your eyes 
and voice, you possess in a degree more 
persuasive than any woman I ever saw, 
read, or heard of. But it is that bewitching 
sort of nameless excellence, that men of 
nice sensibility alone can be touched with. 
Were your husband in England, I would 
freely give him five hundred pounds, if 
money could purchase the acquisition, to 
let you only sit by me two hours in a day, 
while I wrote my Sentimental Journey. I 
am sure the work would sell so much the 
better for it, that I should be reimbursed 
the sum more than seven times told. — I 
would not give nine-pence for the picture 
of you the Newnhams have got executed : 
— it is the resemblance of a conceited, 
made-up coquette. Your eyes, and the 
shape of your face (the latter the most per- 
fect oval I ever saw) which are perfections 
that must strike the most indifferent judge, 
because they are equal to any of God's 
*vorks in a similar way, and finer than any 



she was engaged. — Then to meet at Rane- 
lao-h to-night. — She answered, she did not 
go. — She says, if she allows the least foot- 
ing, she never shall get rid of the acquaint- 
ance; which she is resolved to drop at 
once. She knows them : — she knows they 
are not her friends, nor yours; — and the 
first use they would make of being with 
her, would be to sacrifice you to her, if 
they could, a second time. Let her not 
then ; let her not, my dear, be a greater 
friend to thee than thou art to thyself. She 
begs I will reiterate my request to you, 
that you will not write to them. It will 
give her, and thy Bramin, inexpressible 
pain. Be assured, all this is not without 
reason on her side. I have my reasons too ; 
the first of which is, that I should grieve 
to excess, if Eliza wanted that fortitude her 
Yorick has built so high upon. I said I 
never more . would mention the name to 
thee; and had I not received it as a kind of 
charge from a dear woman that loves you, 
I should not have broke my word. I will 
write again to-morrow to thee, thou best 
and most endearing of girls ! A peaceful 
night to thee. — My spirit will be with thee 
through every watch of it. — Adieu. 



LETTER LXXXVI. 

TO THE SAME. 

I think you could act no otherwise *han 
you did with the young soldier. There 
was no shutting the door against him 
either in politeness or humanity. Thou 
tellest me he seems susceptible of tender 
impressions; and that before Miss Light 
has sailed a fortnight, he will be in lov«» 
with her. — Now I think it a thousand timea 
more likely that he attaches himself to 'net.- 
Eliza; because thou art a thousand t'mra 



.T>6 



LETTERS. 



n.ore amiable. Five months with Eliza, — (every nerve about thee. Nothing so per- 
and in the same room, — and an amorous jnicious as white lead. Take care of your- 



son of Mars besides ! — " It can no be, Mas- 
4i ser." — The sun, if he could avoid it, would 
not shine upon a dunghill ; but his rays are 
so pure, Eliza, and celestial, — I never heard 
that they were polluted by it. — Just such 
will thine be, dearest child, in this, and 
every such situation you will be exposed 
to, till thou art fixed for life. — But thy dis- 
cretion, thy wisdom, thy honor, the spirit, 
of thy Yorick, and thy own spirit, which is 
equal to it, will be thy ablest counsellors. 

Surely, by this time, something- is doing 
for thy accommodation. — But why may not 
clean washing and rubbing do instead of 
painting your cabin, as it is to be hung? 
Paint is so pernicious, both to your nerves 
and lungs, and will keep you so much 
longer, too, out of your apartment ; where, 
I hope, you will pass some of your happiest 
hours. 

I fear the best of your ship-mates are 
only genteel by comparison with the con- 
trasted crew, with which thou must behold 
them. So was — you know who ! — from the 
same fallacy that was put upon the judg- 
ment, when — but I will not mortify you. 
If they are decent and distant, it is enough; 
and as much as is to be expected. If any 
of them are more, I rejoice; — thou wilt 
want every aid ; and 'tis thy due to have 
them. Be cautious only, my dear, of inti- 
macies. Good hearts are open, and fall 
naturally into them. Heaven inspire thine 
with fortitude in this, and every deadly trial. 
Best of God's works, farewell ! Love me, 
I beseech thee ; and remember me for ever! 

I am, my Eliza, and will ever be, in the 
most comprehensive sense, 

Thy friend, 

YORICK. 

P. S. Probably you will have an oppor- 
tunity of writing to me by some Dutch or 
French ship, or from the Cape de Verd 
Islands. — It will reach me somehow. 



LETTER LXXXVIL 

TO THE SAME. 

My Dear Eliza, 
Oh! I grieve for your^cabin: — and the 
reso nairting will be enough to destroy 



self, dear girl ; and sleep not in it too soon*, 
it will be enough to give you a stroke of an 
epilepsy. I hupe you will have left the 
ship; and that my letters may meet and 
greet you, as you get out of your post-chaise, 
at Deal. When you have got them all, put 
them, my dear, into some order. — The first 
eight or nine are numbered ; but I wrote 
the rest without that direction to thee; but 
thou wilt find them out by the day or hour, 
which, I hope, I have generally prefixed to 
them. When they are got together, in 
chronological order, sew them together un- 
der a cover. I trust they will be a per- 
petual refuge to thee, from time to time ; 
and that thou wilt (when weary of fools and 
uninteresting discourse) retire and converse 
an hour with them and me. 

I have not had power, or the heart, to 
aim at enlivening any one of them with a 
single stroke of wit or humor ; but they con- 
tain something better : and what you will feel 
more suited to your situation ; — a long de- 
tail of much advice, truth, and knowledge. 
I hope, too, you will perceive loose touches 
of an honest heart in every one of them ; 
which speaks more than the most studied 
periods; and will give thee more ground 
of trust and reliance upon Yorick, than all 
that labored eloquence could supply. Lean 
then thy whole weight, Eliza, upon them 
and upon me. " May poverty, distress, an- 
" guish, and shame, be my portion, if ever 
"I give thee reason to repent the know 
"ledge of me!" — With this asseveration, 
made in the presence of a just God, I pray 
to him, that so it may speed with me, as 1 
deal candidly and honorably with thee ! I 
would not mislead thee, Eliza : I would nut 
injure thee, in the opinion of a single indi- 
vidual, for the richest crown the proudest 
monarch wears. 

Remember, that while I have life and 
power, whatever is mine, you may style 
and think yours, — though sorry should I 
be, if ever my friendship was put to the 
test thus, for your own delicacy's sake.— 
Money and counters are of equal use, in 
my opinion ; they both serve to set up witn. 

I hope you will answer me this letter, 
but if thou art debarred by the foments 
which hurry thee away, I will wr^te one 



LETTERS. 

*br thee ; and knowing it is such a one as 
thou would'st have written, I will regard it 
ns my Eliza's. 

Honor, and happiness, and health, and 
comforts of every kind, sail along with thee, 
thou most worthy of girls! I will live for 
thee, and my Lydia; — be rich for the dear 
children of my heart; — gain wisdom, gain 
tame, and happiness, to shar^ with them, — 
with thee, — and her, in my old age. — Once 
for all, adieu. — Preserve thy life; steadily 
pursue the ends we proposed ; and let no- 
thing rob thee of those powers Heaven has 
given thee for thy well-being. 

What can I add more, in the agitation of 
mind I am in, and within five minutes of 
the last postman's bell, but recommend thee 
to Heaven, and recommend myself to Hea- 
ven with thee, in the same fervent ejacula- 
tion, "That we may be happy, and meet 
"again; if not in this world, in the next." 
— Adieu. — I am thine, Eliza, affectionately 
and everlastingly, 



377 



YORICK. 



LETTER LXXXVIII. 

TO THF, SAME. 

I wish to God, Eliza, it was possible to 
postpone the voyage to India for another 
year; — for I am firmly persuaded within 
my own heart, that thy husband could never 
limit thee with regard to time. 

I fear that Mr. B has exaggerated 

matters. — I like not his countenance. It is 
absolutely killing. — Should evil befall thee, 
what will he not have to answer for? I 



dread, which has entered his brain, that 
thou may est run him in debt beyonc thv 
appointments, and that he must discharge 
them. — That such a creature should be sac- 
rificed for the paltry consideration of a few 
hundreds, is too, too hard ! Oh ! my child ! 
that I could, with propriety, indemnify him 
for every charge, even to the last mite, that 
thou hast been of to him ! With joy would 
I give him my whole subsistence; — nay, 
sequester my livings, and trust the treasures 
Heaven has furnished my head with, for a 
future subsistence. 

You owe much, I allow, to your husband, 
— you owe something to appearances, and 
the opinion of the world; but, trust me, my 
dear, you owe much likewise to yourself. — 
— Return therefore from Deal, if you con- 
tinue ill. — I will prescribe for you, gratis. 
— You are not the first woman, by many, I 
have done so for, with success. — I will send 
for my wife and daughter, and they shall 
carry you in pursuit of health, to Montpel- 
lier, the wells of Baneois, the Spa, or 
whither thou wilt. Thou shalt direct them, 
and make parties of pleasure in what cor- 
ner of the world fancy points out to thee. 
We shall fish upon the banks of Arno, and 
lose ourselves in the sweet labyrinths of its 
valleys. — And then thou should'st warble to 
us, as I have once or twice heard thee. — 
" I'm lost, I'm lost ! " — but we should find 
thee again, my Eliza. — Of a similar nature 
to this was you physician's prescription : — 
" Use gentle exercise, the pure southern air 
" of France, or milder Naples, with the so- 
" ciety of friendly, gentle beings." Sensi- 
ble man ! He certainly entered into your 
feelings. He knew the fallacy of medicine 
to a creature whose illness has arisen from 



know not the being that will be deserving I the affliction of her mind. Time only, my 
of so much pity, or that I shall hate more, dear, I fear you must trust to, and have your 



He will be an outcast, alien, 



which reliance on; may it give you the health so 



case I will be a father to thy children, my 
good girl ! — therefore take no thought about 
them. — 

But, Eliza, if thou art so very ill, still put 
off all thoughts of returning to India this 
year. — Write to your husband : — tell him 
the truth of your case. — If he is the gener- 
ous, humane man you describe him to be, 
ne cannot but applaud your conduct. — I am 
credibly informed, that his repugnance to 
5 our living in England arises only from the 
2X 



enthusiastic a votary to the charming god- 
dess deserves ! 

I honor you, Eliza, for keeping secret 
some things, which, if explained, had been 
a panegyric on yourself. There is a dignity 
in venerable affliction which will not allow 
it to appeal to the world, for pity or redress 
Well have you supported that character, 
my amiable, philosophic friend ! And, in- 
deed, I begin to think you have as many 
virtues as my uncle Toby's Widow. — i 
32* 



378 



LETTERS. 



don't mean to insinuate, hussy, that my 
opinion is ho better founded than his was 
of Mrs. Wadman ; nor do I conceive it possi- 
ble for any Trim to convince me it is equally 
fallacious. — I am sure, while I have my rea- 
son, it is not. — Talking- of widows : — Pray, 
Eliza, if ever you are such, do not think of 
giving yourself to some wealthy nabob, — 
because I design to marry you myself. — My 
wife cannot live long, — she has sold all the 
provinces in France already ; — and I know 
not the woman I should like so well for her 
substitute as yourself. — 'Tis true, I am 
ninety-five in constitution, and you but 
twenty-five ; — rather too great a disparity 
this! — but what I want in youth, I will 
make up in wit and good-humor. — Not 
Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron his Main- 
tenon, or Waller his Sacharissa, as I will 
love and sing thee, my wife elect ! All those 
names, eminent as they were, shall give 
place to thine, Eliza. Tell me, in answer 
to this, that you approve and honor the pro- 
posal, and that you would (like the Specta- 
tor's mistress) have more joy in putting on 
an old man's slipper, than associating with 
the gay, the voluptuous, and the young. — 
— Adieu, ray Simplicia ! 

Yours, 

TRISTRAM. 



LETTER LXXXIX. 

TO THE SAME. 

My Dear Eliza, 
I have been within the verge of the gates 
of death. — I was ill the last time I wrote to 
you, and apprehensive of what would be the 
consequence. — My fears were but too well 
founded ; for, in ten minutes after I dis- 
patched my letter, this poor, fine-spun frame 
of Yorick's gave way, and I broke a vessel 
in my breast, and could not stop the loss of 
blood tJ 11 four this morning. I have filled 
all thy India handkerchiefs with it. — It 
came, I think, from my heart ; I fell asleep 
through weakness. At six I awoke, with 
the bosom of my shirt steeped ir tears. I 
dreamt I was sitting under the canopy of 
Indolence, and that thou earnest into the 
-oom with a shawl in thy hand, and told me, 
u:y soirit had flown to thee in the Downs, 



with tidings of my fate; and that you were 
come to administer what consolation filial 
affection could bestow, and to receive my 
parting breath and blessing. — With that 
you folded the shawl about my waist, and, 
kneeling, supplicated my attention. 1 awoke; 
but in what a frame ! Oh ! my God ! " But 
" thou wilt number my tears, and put them 
"all into thy bottle." — Dear girl! I see 
thee ; — thou art for ever present to my 
fancy, — embracing my feeble knees, and 
raising thy fine eyes to bid me be of com- 
fort : and, when I talk to Lydia, the words 
of Esau, as uttered* by thee, perpetually 
ring in my ears, — " Bless me even also, 
" my father !" — Blessings attend thee, thou 
child of my heart ! 

My bleeding is quite stopped, and I feel 
the principle of life strong within me ; so 
be not alarmed, Eliza ; — I know I shall do 
well. I have eat my breakfast with hunger ; 
and I write to thee with a pleasure arising 
from that prophetic impression in my ima- 
gination, thafr "all will terminate to our 
" hearts' contents." Comfort thyself eter- 
nally w T ith this persuasion, — " That the best 
" of Beings (as thou hast sweetly expressed 
it) "could not, by a combination of acci- 
dents, produce such a chain of events, 
" merely to be the source of misery to the 
"leading person engaged in them." — The 
observation was very applicable, very good, 
and very elegantly expressed. I wish my 
memory did justice to the wording of it. — 
Who taught you the art of writing so 
sweetly, Eliza] — You have absolutely ex- 
alted it to a science. — When I am in want 
of ready cash, and ill-health will not per- 
mit my genius to exert itself, I shall print 
your letters, as finished essays, "by an un- 
" fortunate Indian Lady." The style is new ; 
and would almost be a sufficient recom- 
mendation for their selling well, without 
merit ; — but their sense, natural ease, and 
spirit, is not to be equalled, I believe, in 
this section of the globe ; nor, I will an- 
swer for it, by any of your countrywomen 
in yours. — I have shown your letter to Mrs, 

B , and to half the literati in town.— 

You shall not be angry with me for it, be 
cause I meant to do you honor by it. — You 
cannot imagine how many admirers your 
epistolary productions have gained you, that 
never viewed your external merits. I only 



LETTERS. 



370 



wonder where tbou could'st acquire t ( ny 
graces, thy goodness, thy accomplishments, 
— so connected ' so educated ! Nature has 
surely studied to make thee her peculiar 
care; — for thou art (and not. in my eyes 
alone) the best and fairest of all her works. 
And so this is the last letter thou art to 
receive from me ; because the Earl of Chat- 
ham* (I read in the papers) is got to the 
Downs; and the wind, I find, is fair. If so, 
— blessed woman ! take my last, last fare- 
well ! — Cherish the remembrance of me; 
think how I esteem, nay, how affectionately 
I love thee, and what a price I set upon 
thee ! Adieu, adieu ! and with my adieu, 
let me give thee one straight rule of con- 
duct, that thou hast heard from my lips in 
a thousand forms, — but I concentre it in 
one word, 

REVERENCE THYSELF. 

Adieu once more, Eliza ! May no an- 
guish of heart plant a wrinkle upon thy 
face, till I behold it again ! May no doubt 
or misgivings disturb the serenity of thy 
mind, or awaken a painful thought about 
thy children ; — for they are Yorick's, — and 
Yorick is thy friend for ever! — Adieu, 
adieu, adieu ! 

P. S. Remember that Hope shortens all 
journeys, by sweetening them ; — so sing my 
little stanza on the subject, with the devo- 
tion of an hymn, every morning when thou 
arisest, and thou wilt eat thy breakfast with 
more comfort for it. 

Blessings rest, and Hygeia go with thee ! 
— May'st thou soon return, in peace and 
ttffluence, to illume my night ! I am, and 
shall be, the last to deplore thy loss, and 
will be the first to congratulate and 
thy return. 

Fare thee well. 



hail 



LETTER XC. 



TO MISS STERNE. 



Bond-street, April 9, 17G7. 

This xeuer, my dear Lydia, will distress 
thy good heart; for, from the beginning, 



* By the newspapers of the times, it appears that 
the Earl of Chatham East Indiaman sailed from Deal 
Apnl 3, 1707. 



thou wilt perceive no entertaining strokes 
of humor in it. — I cannot be cheerful when 
a thousand melancholy ideas surround m<\ 
— I have met with a loss of near fifty 
pounds, which I was taken in for, in an 
extraordinary manner: — but what is that 
loss in comparison of one I may experience 1 
— Friendship is the bnlm and cordial of life, 
and, without it, 'tis a heavy load not worth 
sustaining. — I am unhappy, — thy mother 
and thyself at a distance from mo; and what 
can compensate for such destitution? — For 
God's sake, persuade her to come and fix 
in England, for life is too short to waste in 
separation ; and, whilst she lives in one 
country, and I in another, many people will 
suppose it proceeds from choice ; — besides, 
T want thee near me, thou child and darling 
of my heart ! — I am in a melancholy mood, 
and my Lydia's eyes will smart with weep- 
ing, when I tell her the cause that now 
affects me. — I am apprehensive the dear 
friend I mentioned in my last letter is going 
into a decline. — I was with her a few days 
ago, and I never beheld a being so altered ; 
— she has a tender frame, and looks like a 
drooping lily, for the roses are fled from her 
cheeks. — I can never see or talk to this 
incomparable woman without-bursting into 
tears. — I have a thousand obligations to her, 
and I owe her more than her whole sex, if 
not all the world put together. — She has a 
delicacy in her way of thinking that few 
possess. — Our conversations are of the most 
interesting nature ; and she talks to me of 
quitting this world with more composure 
than others think of living in it. — I have 
wrote an epitaph, of which I send thee a 
copy ; — 'tis expressive of her modest worth ; 
— but may Heaven restore her ; — and may 
she live to write mine ! 

Columns antflabor'd urns but vainly show 
An idle scene of decorated wop. 
The sweet companion, and the friend sincere, 
Need no mechanic help to force the tear. 
In heartfelt numbers, never meant to shine, 
'Twill flow eternal o'er a hearse like thine. 
'Twill flow whilst pentle goodness has one friend. 
Or kindred tempers have a tear to lend. 

Say all that is kind of me to thy mother, 
and believe me, my Lydia, that I love thee 
most truly. — So adieu. — T am what 1 ever 
was, and hope ever shall be, 

Thy affectionate Father, 

L. STERNE 



380 LETTERS. 

As te Mr. M , by your description he 

is a fat fool. I beg you will not give up 
your time lo such a being. — Send me some 
batons pour les dents; — there are none good 
here. 



LETTER XCI. 



TO LADY P- 



Mount Coffee-house, Tuesday, 3 o'clock. 

There is a strange mechanical effect 
produced in writing a billet-doux within a 
stone-cast of the Lady who engrosses the 
heart and soul of an enamorato ; — for this 
cause (but mostly because I am to dine in 
this neighborhood) have I, Tristram Shan- 
dy, come forth from my lodgings to a coffee- 
house, the nearest I could find to my dear 

Lady 's house, and have called for a 

sheet of gilt paper, to try the truth of this 
article of my creed. — Now for it. 

O my dear Lady, what a dish-clout of a 
soul hast thou made of me ! — I think, by 
the bye, this is a little too familiar an in- 
troduction for so unfamiliar a situation as I 
6tand in with yon, — where, Heaven knows, 
I am kept at a distance, — and despair of 
getting one inch nearer you, with all the 
steps and windings I can think of to recom- 
mend myself to you. — Would not any man 
in his senses run diametrically from you, — 
and as far as his legs would carry him, ra- 
ther than thus causelessly, foolishly, and 
fool-hardily expose himself afresh, — and 
afresh, where his heart and his reason tell 
him he shall be sure to come off loser, if 
not totally undone ? — Why should you tell 
me you would be glad to see meT 



Christian hero, ready to take *hc he>tl 
against the world, the flesh, and tne Devil ; 
not doubting but I should finally trample 
them all down under my feet ; — and now I 
am got so near you, — within this vile stone's 
cast of your house, — I feel myself drawn 
into a vortex, that has turned my brain up- 
side downwards ; and, though I had pur- 
chased a box-ticket to carry me to Miss 
*******'s benefit, yet I know very well, that 
was a single line directed to me to let me 

know Lady would be alone at seven, 

and suffer me to spend the evening with her, 
she would infallibly see every thing verified 

I have told her. — I dine at Mr. C r's, 

in Wigmore-street, in this neighborhood, 
where I shall stay till seven, in hopes you 
purpose to put me to this proof. If I hear 
nothing by that time, shall conclude you 
are better disposed of, — and shall take a 
sorry hack, and sorrily jog on to the play. 
— Curse on the world! I know nothing 
but sorrow, except this one thing, that I 
love you (perhaps foolishly, but) 

Most sincerely, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XCI1. 



TO MR. AND MRS. J- 



Old Bond-street, April 21, 1767. 

I am sincerely affected, my dear Mr. and 

Mrs. J , by your friendly inquiry, and 

the interest you are so good to take in my 
health. God knows I am not able to give 
a good account myself, having passed a bad 
night in much feverish agitation. — My phy- 
Does it jsician ordered me to bed, and to keep there- 



give you pleasure to make me more un- 
happy] — or does it add to your triumph, 
that your eyes and lips have turned a man 
into a fool, whom the rest of the town is 
courting as a wit! — I am a fool, — the 
weakest, the most ductile, the most tender 
fool, — that ever woman tried the weakness 
of; — and the most unsettled in my purposes 
and resolutions of recovering my right 
mind. — It is but an hour ago that I kneeled 
down aoid swnre I never would come near 
you ; — and, after saying my Lord's Prayer 
for the sake of the close, of not being led 
tnto temptation, — out I sallied like any 



in till some favorable change. — I fell ill 
the moment I got to my lodgings : — he says 
it is owing to my taking James's Powder, 
and venturing out on so cold a day as Sun- 
day ; — but he is mistaken, for I am certain 
whatever bears the name must have efficacy 
with me. — I was bled yesterday, and again 
to-day, and have been almost dead; but this 
friendly inquiry from Gerrard-street has 
poured balm into what blood I have left. — 
I hope still, and (next to the sense of what 
I owe my friends) it shall be the last plea- 
surable sensation I will part with ; — if I 
continue mending, it will yet be *ome time 



before I shall have strength enough to get 
out in a carriage. — My first visit will be a 
visit of true gratitude. — I leave my kind 
friends to guess where. — A thousand bless- 
ings go along with this; and may Heaven 
preserve you both ! — Adieu, my dear Sir, 
and dear Lady. 

I am your ever obliged, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XC1II. 

TO IGNATIUS SANCHO. 
Bond-street, Saturday, [April 25, 1767.J 

I was very sorry, my good Sancho, that 
] jvas not at home, to return my com pi i- 
nrcnts by you for the great courtesy of the 
Dnke of M — g — 's family to me, in honor- 
ing my list of subscribers with their names; 
— for which I bear them all thanks. — But 
you have something to add, Sancho, to 
what I owe your good-will also on this ac- 
count, and tbat is to send me the subscrip- 
tion-money, which I find a necessity of dun- 
ning my best friends for before I leave 
town, — to avoid the perplexities of both 
keeping pecuniary accounts (for which I 
have very slender talents) and collecting 
them (for which I have neither strength of 
body or mind ;) and so, good Sancho, dun 

the Duke of M , the Duchess of M , 

and Lord M , for their subscriptions ; 

and lay the sin, and money with it too, at 
my door. — I wish so good a family every 
blessing they merit, along with my humblest 
compliments. You know, Sancho, that I 
am your friend and well-wisher, 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. I leave town on Friday morning, 
— and should on Thursday, but that I stay 
to dine with Lord and Lady S . 



LETTER XCIV. 

TO THE EARL OF S . 

Old Bond-street. May 1, 1767. 

My Lord, 
I was yesterday taking leave of all the 
town, with an intention of leaving it this 
day : but I am detained by the kindness of 

Lord and Lady S , who have made a 

party to dine and sup, on my account. — I 



LETTERS. 381 

am impatient to set out for my solitude, for 
there the mind gains strength, and learns 
to lean upon herself. — In the world it seek" 
or accepts of a few treacherous supports- 
— the feigned compassion of ono, — the flat- 
tery of a second, — the civilities of a third, 
— the friendship of a fourth, — they all de- 
ceive, and bring the mind back to where 
mine is retreating, to retirement, reflection, 
and books. My departure is fixed for to- 
morrow morning; but I could not think of 
quitting a place where I have received such 
numberless and unmerited civilities from 
your Lordship, without returning my most 
grateful thanks, as well as my hearty ac- 
knowledgments for your friendly inquiry 
from Bath. Illness, my Lord, has occasioned 
my silence. — Death knocked at my door, 
but I would not admit him ; — the call was 
both unexpected and unpleasant; — and lam 
seriously worn down to a shadow, — and 
still very weak : — but, weak as I am, I have 
as whimsical a story to tell you as ever 
befell one of my family ; — Shandy's nose, 
his name, his sash-window, are fools to it ; 
— it will serve at least to amuse you. — The 
injury I did myself last month in catching 
cold upon James's powder, — fell, you must 
know, upon the worst part it could, — the 
most painful and most dangerous of any in 
the human body. It was on this crisis I 
called in an able surgeon, and with him an 
able physician (both my friends) to inspect 
my disaster. — 'Tis a venereal case, cried 
my two scientific friends. — 'Tis impossible, 
however, to be that, replied I; — for I have 
had no commerce whatever with the sex, — 
not even with my wife, added I, these fif- 
teen years. — You are, however, my good 
friend, said the surgeon, or there is no such 
case in the world. — What the Devil, said I, 
without knowing woman 1 — We will not 
reason about it, said the physician, but you 
must undergo a course of mercury. — I will 
lose my life first, said I: and trust to nature, 
to time, or, at the worst, to death. — So I 
put an end, with some indignation, to the. 
conference, — and determined to bear all the 
torments I underwent, and ten times more, 
rather than submit to be treated like a 
sinner, in a point where I had acted like a 
saint. — Now as the father of mischief would 
have it, who has no pleasure like that o r 
dishonoring the righteous, It so fell out that 



2*2 



LETTERS. 



from the moment I dismissed my doctors, 
my pains began to rage with a violence not 
to be expressed, or supported. Every hour 
became more intolerable. — I was got to bed, 
cried out, and raved the whole night, and 
was got up so near dead, that my friends 
insisted upon my sending again for my phy- 
sician and surgeon. I told them, upon the 
word of a man of honor, they were both 
mistaken as to my case ; — but, though they 
had reasoned wrong, they might act right : 
but that, sharp as my sufferings were, I felt 
them not so sharp as the imputation which 
a venereal treatment of my case laid me 
under. — They answered, that these taints 
of the blood lie dormant twenty years ; but 
they would not reason with me in a point 
wherein I was so delicate, but would do all 
the offices for which they were called in, 
namely to put an end to my torment, which 
otherwise would put an end to me ; — and so 
I have been compelled to surrender myself: 
— and thus, my dear Lord, has your poor 
friend, with all his sensibilities, been suffer- 
ing the chastisement of the grossest sensu- 
alist ! — Was it not as ridiculous an embar- 
rassment as ever Yorick's spirit was in- 
volved in] — Nothing but the purest con- 
science of innocence could have, tempted 
me to write this story to my wife, which, 
by the bye, would make no bad anecdote in 
Tristram Shandy's Life. — I have mentioned 
it in my journal to Mrs. . In some re- 
spects, there is no difference between my 
wife and herself: — whe'n they fare alike, 
neither can reasonably complain. — T have 
just received letters from France, with some 
hints that Mrs. Sterne and my Lydia are 
coming to England, to pay me a visit. — If 
your time is not better employed, Yorick 
flatters himself he shall receive a letter 
from your Lordship, en attendant. — I am, 
with the greatest regard, my Lord, 
Your Lordship's 

Most faithful humble servant, 

L. STERNE. 



my chaise stands at my door, to take and 
convey this poor body to its legal settlement. 
— I am ill, very ill ; — I languish most affect- 
ingly. — I am sick both soul and body. — It 
is*a cordial to me to hear it is different with 
you ; — no man interests himself more in 
your happiness ; and I am glad you are in so 

fair a road to it : — enjoy it long, my D ; 

whilst I — no matter what, — but my feelings 
are too nice for the world I live in : — things 
will mend. — I dined yesterday with Lord 

and Lady S : we talked much of you 

and your goings on ; for every one knows 
why Sunbury Hill is so pleasant a situation ! 
— You rogue ! you have lock'd up my boots, 
— and I go bootless home: — and I fear I 
shall go bootless all my life. — Adieu, gen- 
tlest and best of souls, — adieu. 

I am yours, most affectionately, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XCVI. 



TO J- 



II- 



LETTER XCV. 

TO J D N, ESQ.. 

Old Bond-street, Friday morning. 

1 w\s ffomg, my dear D n, to bed be- 
fore 1 received yo ir kind inquiry ; and now 



—, ESQ. 

Newark, Monday, 
Ten o'clock in the morn 

My Dear Cousin, 
I have got conveyed thus far, like a bale 
of cadaverous goods, consigned to Pluto and 
company, — lying in the bottom of my chaise 
most of the route, ifpon a large pillow, which 
I had the prevoyance to purchase before I 
set out. — I am worn out ; — but press on to 
Barnby Moor to-night, and, if possible, to 
York the next. — I know not what is the 
matter with me, — but some derangement 
presses hard upon this machine: — still, I 
think, it will not be overset this bout. — My 

love to G . We shall all meet from the 

east, and from the south, and (as at the last) 
be happy together. My kind respects to a 

few. — I am, dear H , 

Truly yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XCVII. 



TO A. 



-E, ESQ. 
Coxwould, June 7, 1767. 



Dear L e, 

I had not been many days at this peace- 
ful cottage before your letter greeted me 
with the seal of friendship : and most cor- 



LETTERS. 



383 



dially do I thank you for so kind a proof of 
your good-will. I was truly anxious to 
hear of the recovery of my sentimental 
friend, — but I would not write to inquire 
after her, unless I could have sent her the 
testimony without the tax; even how d'yes 
to invalids, or those that have lately been 
so, either call to mind what is past or what 
may return ; at least I find it so. I am as 
happy as a prince, at Coxwould ; and I wish 
you could see in how princely a manner 1 
live : 'tis a land of plenty. I sit down alone 
to venison, fish, and wild fowl, or a couple 
of fowls or ducks, with curds, and straw- 
berries, and cream, and all the simple 
plenty which a rich valley (under Hamil- 
ton Hills) can produce ; with a clean cloth 
on my table, arid a bottle of wine on my 
right hand to drink your health. I have a 
hundred hens and chickens about my yard, 
and not a parishioner catches a hare, or a 
rabbit, or a trout, but he brings it as an 
offering to me. If solitude would cure a 
love-sick heart, I would give you an invi- 
tation ; but absence and time lessen no 
attachment which virtue inspires. I am in 
high spirits ; care never enters this cottage. 
— 1 take the air every day in my post-chaise, 
with two long-tailed horses, — they turn out 
good ones; and as to myself, I think I am 
better upon the whole for the medicines 
and regimen I submitted to in town. — May 



you, dear L- 
the other ! 



want neither the one nor 
Yours, truly, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER XCVIII. 

TO THE SAME. 

Coxwould, June 30, 1767. 

I am in still better health, my dear L e. 

than when I wrote last to you, owing I be- 
lieve to my riding out every day with my 

friend H -, whose castle lies near the 

sea; and there is a beach as even as a 
mirror, of five miles in length, before it, 
where we daily run races in our chaises, 
with one wheel in the sea, and the other 
on land. D has obtained his fair In- 



dian, and has this post sent a Irtter of in- 
quiries after Yorick and his Bramin. He 
is a good soul, and interests himself much 

in our fate. — I cannot forgive you, L e, 

for your folly in saying you intend to get 

introduced to the . I despise them; 

and I shall hold your understanding much 
cheaper than I now do, if you persist in a 
resolution so unworthy of you. — I suppose 

Mrs. J telling you they were sensible, 

is the groundwork you go upon. By 

they are not clever; though what is com- 
monly called wit, may pass for literature on 
the other side of Temple- Bar. — You say 

Mrs. J thinks them amiable: — she 

judges too favorably : but I have put a stop 
to her intentions of visiting them. They 
are bitter enemies of mine ; and I am even 
with them. La Bramine assured me they 
used their endeavors with her to break off 
her friendship with me, for reasons I will 
not write, but tell you. — I said enough of 
them before she left England ; and though 
she yielded to me in every other point, yet 
in this she obstinately persisted. — Strange 
infatuation ! — but I think I have effected 
my purpose by a falsity, which Yorick's 
friendship to the Bramine can only justify. 
— I wrote her word that the most amiable 
of women reiterated my request, that she: 
would not write to them. I said, too, she 
had concealed many things for the sake of 

her peace of mind, when, in fact, L , 

this was merely a child of my own brain, 

made Mrs. J 's by adoption, to enforce 

the argument 1 had before urged so strongly 
— Do not mention this circumstance to Mrs. 

J ; 'twould displease her; and I had 

no design in it but for the Bramine to be a 
friend to herself — I ought now to be busy 
from sun-rise to sun-set, for I have a book 
to write, — a wife to receive, — an estate to 
sell, — a parish to superintend, — and, what 
is worst of all, a disquieted heart to reason 
with : these are continual calls upon me. — 
I have received half a dozen letters to pre^s 
me to join my friends at Scarborough, but 
I am at present deaf to them all. I perhaps 
may pass a few days there something later 
in the season, not at present; — and so, dea*- 

L , adieu. 

I am most cord 'ally yours, 

^. STERN R 



384 



LETTERS. 



LETTER XCIX. 

TO IGNATIUS SANCHO. 

Coxwould, June 30. 1767. 

I must acknowledge the courtesy of my 
good friend Sancho's letter, were I ten 
times busier than I am ; and must thank 
him too for the many expressions of his 
good-will and good opinion : — 'tis all affec- 
tation to say a man is not gratified with 
being praised ; we only want it to be sin- 
cere : and then it will be taken, Sancho, as 
kindly as yours. I left town very poorly, 
and with an idea I was taking leave of it 
for ever; but good air, a quiet retreat, and 
quiet reflections along with it, with an ass 
to milk, and another to ride upon (if I choose 
it), all together do wonders. I shall live 
this year at least, I hope, be it but to give 
the worJd, before I quit it, as good impres- 
sions of me, as you have, Sancho. I would 
only covenant for just so much health and 
spirits as are sufficient to carry my pen 
through the task I have set it this summer. 
But I am a resigned being, Sancho, and 
take health and sickness as I do light and 
darkness, or the vicissitudes of seasons ; 
that is, just as it pleases God to send them, 
and accommodate myself to their periodical 
returns as well as I can ; only taking care, 
whatever befalls me in this silly world, not 
to lose my temper at it. This I believe, 
friend Sancho, to be the truest philosophy ; 
for this we must be indebted to ourselves, 
but not to our fortunes. Farewell. — I hope 
you will not forget your custom of giving 
me a call at my lodgings next winter. In 
the mean time, I am, very cordially, 
My honest friend Sancho, 
Yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER C. 

TO MR. AND MRS. J . 

Coxwould, July 6, 1767. 
It is with as much true gratitude as ever 
heart" felt, that I sit down to thank my dear 
mends, Mr. and Mrs. J , for the continu- 
ation of their attention to me ; but. for this 
laat instance of their humanity and polite- 



ness to me, I must ever be their debtor. * 
never can thank you enough,, my dear friends, 
and yet I thank you from my soul ; and for 
the single day's happiness your goodness 
would have sent me, I wish I could send 
you back thousands: — I cannot, but they 
will come of themselves ; and so God bless 
you. — I have had twenty times my pen in 
my hand since I came down, to write a let- 
ter to you both in Gerrard-street ; but I am a 
shy kind of a soul at the bottom, and have a 
jealousy about troubling my friends, — espe- 
cially about myself. I am now got perfectly 
well; but was, a month after my arrival in 
the country, in but a poor state : my body 
has got the start, and is at present more at 
ease than my mind ; — but this world is a 
school of trials, and so Heaven's will be 
done! — I hope that you have enjoyed all 
that I have wanted ; and to complete your 
joy, that your little lady flourishes like a 
vine at your table ; to which I nope to see 
her preferred by next winter. — T am now 
beginning to be truly busy at my Senti- 
mental Journey ; — the pains and sorrows of 
this life having retarded its progress ; but I 
shall make up my lee-way, and overtake 
every body in a very short time. 

What can I send you that Yorkshire pro- 
duces] Tell me; I want to be of use to 
you, for I am, my dear friends, with the 
truest value and esteem, 

Your ever obliged 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CI. 

TO MR. PANCHAUD, AT PARIS. 

York, July 20, 1767. 

My Dear Panchaud, 
Be so kind as to forward what letters are 
arrived for Mrs. Sterne, at your office, by 
to-day's post, or the next ; and she will re- 
ceive them before she quits Avignon, for 
England. She wants to lay out a little 
money in an annuity for her daughter: — 
advise her to get her life insured in London, 
lest my Lydia should die before her. — If 
there are any packets, send them with the 
ninth volume* of Shandy ; which she has 



* Alluding to the first edition. 



LETTERS. 



385 



She says, she has drawn I dear girl are coming- to pay me a visit for a 



failed 01 getting, 
'or fifty F.A>nis. When she leaves Paris, 
»end by her my account. — Have you got me 
«uiy French subscriptions? or subscriptions 
.n France? — Present my kindest service to 
Miss P. I know, her politeness and good- 
natuie will incline her to give Mrs. J. her 
advice about what she may venture to bring 
over. — I hope every thing goes on well, 
though never half so well as I wish. — God 
prosper you, my dear friend ! — Believe me 
most warmly 

Yours, 

L. STERNE. 

The sooner you send me the gold snuff- 
box, the better: — 'tis a present from my 
best friend. 



LETTER CII. 



TO MR. AND MRS. J. 



Coxwould, Aug. 2, 1767. 

My dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. J — , are 
infinitely kind to me, in sending now and 
then a letter to inquire after me; and to 
acquaint me how they are. — You cannot 
conceive, my dear Lady, how truly I bear a 
part in your illness. — I wish Mr. J — would 
carry you to the south of France, in pur- 
suit of health : — but why need I wish it, 
when I know his affection will make him 
do that and ten times as much, to prevent 
a return of those symptoms which alarmed 
him so much in the spring? — Your polite- 
ness and humanity are always contriving to 
treat me agreeably; and what you promise 
next winter, will be perfectly so : — but you 
must get well; and your little dear girl 
must be of the party, with her parents and 
fi iends, to give it a relish. — I am sure you 
show no partiality but what is natural and 
praiseworthy, m behalf of your daughter ; 
but I wonder my friends will not find her 
a play-fellow : and 1 both hope and advise 
them not to venture along, through this 
warfare of life, without two strings at least 
to their bow. — I had letters from France by 
Inst night's post; by which (by some fatality) 
I find not one of my letters has reached 
Mrs. Sterne. This gives me concern, as it 
wears the aspect of unkindness, which she 
y no means merits from me. — Mv wife and 
2 Y 



few months: — I wish I may prevail with 
them to tarry longer. — You must permit 
me, dear Mrs. J., to make my Lydia known 
to you, if I can prevail with my wife to 
come and spend a little time in London, as 
she returns to France. I expect a small 
parcel : — may I trouble you, before you 
write next, to send to my lodgings to ask if 
there is any thing directed to me that you 
can inclose under cover? — I have hut one 
excuse for this freedom, which I am prompt- 
ed to use, from a persuasion that it is doing 
you pleasure to give you an opportunity of 
doing an obliging thing ; — and, as to myself, 
I rest satisfied ; for 'tis only scoring up an- 
other debt of thanks to the millions I owe 
you both already. — Receive a thousand and 
a thousand thanks ! yes, and with them ten 
thousand friendly wishes for all you wish 
in this world ! — May my friend Mr. J. con- 
tinue blessed with good health ! and may his 
good Lady get perfectly well ! there being 
no woman's health or comfort I so ardently 
pray for. — Adieu, my dear friends. — Bo. 
lieve me most truly and faithfully yours, 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. In Eliza's last letter, dated from 
St. Jago, she tells me, as she does you, 
that she is extremely ill. — God protect 
her ! — By this time surely she has set 
foot upon dry land at Madras. — 1 heartily 
wish her well; and if Yorick was *vith her, 
he would tell her so ; — but he is cut off from 
this by bodily absence: — I am prestnt with 
her in spirit, however — but what is that ' 
you will say. 



TO J- 



LETTER OIL 

— h s , Esa. 

Coxwould, August 11 1767 



My Dear H. 

I am glad all has passed with so much 
amity, inter te et Jilium Marcun tuum % 
and that Madame has found grace in thy 
sight. — All is well that ends well ; — and so 
much for moralizing upon it. I wish you 
could or would take up your parable, and 
prophesy as much good concerning me and 
my affairs. — Not one of my letters has got 
to Mrs. Sterne since the notification ot ne* 
33 



3S0 LETTERS. 

intentions; which his a pitiful air on my 
side, though I have wrote her six or seven. 
— I imagine she will be here the latter end 
of September ; though I have no date for it 
but her impatience ; — which, having suffer- 
ed by my supposed silence, I am persuaded 
will make her fear the worst ; — if that is the 
case, she will fly to England : — a most natu- 
ral conclusion. — You did well to discontinue 
all commerce with James's powders, — as 
you are so well ; rejoice, therefore, and let 
your heart be merry ; mine ought upon the 
same score ; — for I never have been so well 
since I left college; and should be a marvel- 



LETTER CIV. 



TO MR. AND MRS. J. 



Coxwould, Aug. *3. 1767. 

My Dear Friends, 
I but copy your great civility to mo in 
writing you word, that I have this moment 
received another letter, wrote eighteen 
days after the date of the last, from St. 
Jago. — If our poor friend could have wrote 
another letter to England, you would, in 
course, have had it ; but, I fear, from the 
circumstances of great hurry and bodily 
lous happy man, but for some reflections I disorder in which she was when she dis- 



which bow down my spirits; but if I live 
but even three or four years, I will acquit 
myself with honor; and, no matter, we will 
talk this over when we meet. — If all ends 
as temperately as with you, and that I find 
grace, &c. &c., I will come and sing Te 
Dcum, or drink poculum elevatum, or do 
any thing with you in the world. — I should 
depend upon G — 's critic upon my head, as 
much as Moliere's old woman upon his 
-comedies. When you do not want her so- 
ciety, let it be carried into your bed-cham- 
ber to flay her, or clap it upon her bum, — 
to- 
do it 



patched this, she might not have time. — In 
case it has so fallen out, I send you the con- 
tents of what I have received : — and that 
is a melancholy history of herself and suf- 
ferings since they left St. Jago; — continual 
and most violent rheumatism all the time ; 
— a fever, brought on with fits, and attended 
with delirium, and every terrifying symp- 
tom: — the recovery from this left her low 
and emaciated to a skeleton. — I give you 
the pain of this detail with a bleeding heart, 
knowing how much, at the same time, i* 
will affect yours. — The three or four last 
and give her my blessing as you days of our journal leave us with hopes she 

| will do well at last, for she is more cheer- 
My postilion has set me aground for a week, !ful, — and seems to be getting into better 
by one of my pistols bursting in his hand; spirits; and health will follow in course, 
which he taking for granted to be quite shot ; They have crossed the Line : — are much 
off, — he instantly fell upon his knees, and becalmed ; by which, with other delays, she 
isaid (Our Father, which art in Heaven, hal- .fears they will lose their passage to Mad- 
lowed be thy Name); at which like a good |ras, — and be some months sooner for it at 
•Christian he stopped, not remembering any j Bombay. — Heaven protect her ! for she suf- 
more of it. The affair was not so bad as he jfers much, and with uncommon fortitude. — 
at first thought ; for it has only bursten two ! She writes much to me about her dear 

of his fingers, he says. — I long to return to j friend Mrs. J , in her last packet. — In 

truth, my good Lady, she loves and honors 
you from her heart ; but, if she did not, I 
should not esteem her, or wish her so well 
as I do. — Adieu, my dear friends: — you 
have few in the world more truly and cor- 
dially 

Yours, 

L. STERNE. 



3'ou ; but I sit here alone as solitary and sad 
as a Tom-cat; which, by the bye, is all the 
• company I keep: — he follows me from 
the parlor to the kitchen, into the gar- 
den, and every place. I wish I had a 
dog ; — my daughter will bring me one ; — 
and so God be about you, and strengthen 
jour faith. — I am affectionately, dear cou- 
sin, yours, 

L. STERNE. 

My service to the C s, though they 

*re from tame ; and -to Panty. 



P. S. I have just received, as a present 
from a man I shall ever love, a most elegant 
gold snuff-box, fabricated for me at Paris ; 
— 'tis not the first pledge I have received 



LETTERS. 



39W 



of his friendship. — May I presume to in- 



close you a letter of chit-chat which I shall the other side of my fire ; — but if he is a* 



write to Eliza. I know you will write 
yourself; and my letter may have the honor 
ti chaperon yours to India: — they will 
neither of them be the worse received for 
going together in company; but I fear they 
will get late in the year to their destined 
port, as they go first to Bengal. 



lively French dog shall have his place on 



devilish as when I last saw him, I must, tu- 
tor him ; for I will not have my cat abused. 
— In short, I will have nothing devilish 
about me : — a combustion will spoil a senti- 
mental thought. 

Another thing I must desire: — do not be 
alarmed ; — 'tis to throw all your rouge-pots 
into the Sorgue before you set out. — I wil 
have no rouge put on in England ; — and do 

not bewail them as did her silver 

seringae, or glister-equipage, which she 
lost in a certain river; but take a wise reso- 
lution of doing without rouge. — I have 
been three days ago bad again, with a spit- 
ting of blood : — and that unfeeling brute 
******* came an( j (j rew m y curtains, and 
with a voice like a trumpet, halloo'd in my 

ear, — "Z ds, what a fine. kettle of fish 

" have you brought yourself to, Mr. S !" 

In a faint voice, I bade him leave me ; for 
comfort sure was never administered in so 
rough a manner. — Tell your mother, I hope 
she will purchase what either of you may 
want at Paris, — 'tis an occasion not to hf» 
lost, — so write to me from Paris, that I 
may come and meet you in my post-chaise, 
with my long-tailed horses ; — and the mo- 
ment you have both put your feet in it, call 
it hereafter yours. — Adieu, dear Lydia. 
Believe me, what I ever shall be, 

Your affectionate father, 

L. STEJtNE. 

I think I shall not write to Avignon any 
more; but you will find one for vou at 
but so so here. — You are right ; — he studies Paris.— Once more, adieu. 
Nature more than any, or rather most of 
the French comedians. — If the Empress of 
Russia pays him and his wife a pension of 
twenty thousand livres a year, I think he 
is very well off! — The folly of staying till 
after twelve for supper, — that you two ex- 
communicated beings might have meat ! — 
" his conscience would not let it be served 
" before." — Surely the Marquis thought 
you both, being English, could not be satis- 
fied without it. — I would have given, not 
my gown and cassock (for I have but one) 
Hut my topaz ring, to have seen the petits 
maitres et maltresses go to mass, after 
having spent the night in dancing. — As to 
'my pleasures, they are few in compass. — 
My poor cat sits purring beside me. Your 



LETTER CV. 

TO MISS STERNE. 

Coxwould, Aug. 24, 1767. 

I am truly surprised, my dear Lydia, 
that my last letter has not reached thy mo- 
ther, and thyself; — it looks most unkind on 
my part, after your having wrote me word 
of your mother's intention of coming to 
England, that she has not received my let- 
ter to welcome you both ; — and though in 
that I said I wished you would defer your 
journey till March (for before that time I 
should have published my sentimental work, 
and should be in town to receive you) — 
yet I will show you more real politesses 
than any you have met with in France, as 
mine will come warm from the heart. — I 
am sorry you are not here at the races; 
but les fetes champetres of the Marquis de 
Sade have made you amends. — I know 

B very well ; and he is what in France 

would be called Admirable, — that would be 



LETTER CVI. 



TO SIR W. 



Sept . 19, i-b/ 

My Dear Sir, 
You are perhaps the drollest being iu 
the universe. — Why do you banter me so 
about what I wrote to you? — Though I 
told you, every morning I jump'd into Ve- 
nus's lap (meaning thereby the sea) was 
you to infer from that, that I leaped into 
the ladies' beds afterwards? — The bo..* 
guides you, — the mind me. — I have \vntn 
the most whimsical letter to a Lady tha-. 



383 



LETTERS. 



was ever re?-1, and talked of body and soul 
too. — I said she had made me vain, by say- 
ing 1 she was mine more than ever woman 
was ; but she is not the Lady of Bond-street ; 

nor square: nor the Lady who suppM 

with me, in Bond-street, on scollop'd oys- 
ters, and other such things ; — nor did she 
ever go tete-a-tete with me to Salt Hill. — 
Enough of such nonsense ; the past is over, 
and I can justify myself unto myself. — Can 
you do as much? — No, faith! — "You can 
" feel I" Ay, so can my cat, when he hears 
a female caterwauling on the house-top ; — 
but caterwauling disgusts me. I had ra- 
ther raise a gentle flame, than have a dif- 
ferent one raised in me. Now, I take Hea- 
ven to witness, after all this badinage, my 
heart is innocent; — and the sporting of my 
pen is equal, just equal, to what I did in 
boyish days, when I got astride of a stick, 
and gallop'd away. — The truth is this, — 
That my pen governs me; — not me my 
pen. — You are much to blame if you dig 
for marl, unless you are sure of it. I was 
once such a puppy myself, as to pare, and 
burn, and had my labor for my pains, and 
two hundred pounds out of my pocket. 
Curse on farming (said I) I will try if the 
pen will not succeed better than the spade. 
The following up of that affair (I mean 
farming) made me lose my temper : and a 
cart-load of turnips was (I thought) very 
dear at two hundred pounds. 

In all your operations, may your own 
good sense guide you ! Bought experience 
is the Devil. — Adieu, adieu. — Believe me 
Yours, most truly, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CVIL 



TO THE SAME. 



Coxwould, Sept. 27, 1767. 

Dear Sir, 

You are arrived at Scarborough when all 
the world has left it; but you are an unac- 
countable being; and so there is nothing 
more to be said on the matter. — You wish 
me to come to Scarborough, and join you 
to read a work that is not yet finished ; be- 
sides, I have other things in my head. — My 
w«re will be here in three or four days, and 



I must not be found straying in the w^luer- 
ness; but I have been there. As for meet- 
ing you at Bluit's, with all my heart. — I 
will laugh and drink my barley-water with 
you. As soon as I have greeted my wife 
and daughter, and hired them a house at 
York, I shall go to London ; where you 
generally are in spring : — and then my 
Sentimental Journey will, I dare say, con- 
vince you that my feelings are from the 
heart; and that that heart is not of the 
worst of moulds. — Praised be God for my 
sensibility ! Though it has often made me 
wretched, yet I would not exchange it for 
all the pleasures the grossest sensualist 
ever felt. Write to me the day you will 
be at York ; — 'tis ten to one but I may in- 
troduce you to my wife and daughter. Be- 
lieve me, my good Sir, 

Ever yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CVIII. 

TO MR. PANCHAUD, AT PARIS. 

York, Oct. 1, 1767 

Dear Sir, 
I have ordered my frier.d Becket to ad- 
vance, for two months, your account, which 
my wife this day delivered : she is in rap- 
tures with all your civilities. — This is to 
give you notice to draw upon your corre* 
spondent; — and Becket will deduct out of 
my publication. To morrow morning I re- 
pair with her to Coxwould ; and my Lydia 
seems transported with the sight of me. — 
Nature, dear P- — , breathes in all her 
composition ; and, except a little vivacity, 
which is a fault in the world we live in, I 
am fully content with her mother's care of 
her. — Pardon this digression from business; 
— but 'tis natural to speak of those we love. 
As to the subscriptions which your friend- 
ship has procured me, I must have them to 
incorporate with my lists, which are to be 
prefix'd to the first volume. — My wife and 
daughter join in millions of thanks : — they 
will leave me the first of December.— 
Adieu, adieu. — Believe me 

Yours, most truly, 

L. STERNE 



LETTER CIX. 



TO MR. AND MRS. J. 



Coxvvould, Oct. 3, 1767. 

I have suffered under a strong desire, for 
above this fortnight, to send a letter of in- 
quiries after the health and the well-being of 

my dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. J ; and 

I do assure you both, 'twas merely owing to 
a little modesty in my temper, not to make 
my good-will troublesome, where I have so 
much, and to those I never think of but 
with ideas of sensibility and obligation, 
that I have refrain'd. — Good God ! to think 
I could be in town, and not go, the first 



LETTERS. 380 

been hard writing ever since ; — and hope, 
by Christmas, I shall be able to give a 
gentle rap at your door, — and tell you how 
happy I am to see my two good friends. — I 
assure you I spur on my Pegasus more vio- 
lently upon that account, and am now de- 
termined not to draw bit till I have finished 
this Sentimental Journey ; — which I hope 
to lay at your feet, as a small (but very 
honest) testimony of the constant truth with 
which I am, 

My dear friends, 

Your ever obliged 
And grateful 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. My wife and daughter arrived here 



step I made, to Gerrard-street ! — My mind last night from France. — My girl has re- 
and body must be at sad variance with each jturn'd an elegant, accomplished little slut. 



other, should it ever fall out that it is not 
both the first and last place also where I shall 
betake myself, were it only to say, " God 
" bless you !" — May you have every bless- 
ing he can send you ! 'tis a part of my 
litany ; where you will always have a place 
whilst I have a tongue to repeat it. And 
bo you heard I had left Scarborough ; which 
you would no more credit, than the reasons 
assign'd for it: — I thank you for it kindly : 
though you have not told me what they 
were; being a shrewd divine, I think I can 
guess. — I was ten days at Scarborough, in 
September; and was hospitably entertained 
by one of the best of our bishops; who, as 
he kept house there, press'd me to be with 
him ; and his household consisted of a gen- 
tleman and two ladies; — which, with the 
good bishop and myself, made so good a 
party, that we kept much to ourselves. — I 
made in this time a connexion of great 
friendship with my mitred host; who would 
gladly have taken me with him back to 
Ireland. — However, we all left Scarborough 
together, and lay fifteen miles off, where 
we kindly parted. — Now it was supposed 
(and I have since heard) that I e'en went 
on with the party to London ; and this, I 
suppose, was the reason assign'd for my 
being there. — I dare say, Charity would 
add a little to the account, and give out 
Sat 'twas on the score of one, and perhaps 
both of the ladies, — and I will excuse 
Cnarity on that head, for a heart disengaged 
could not well have done better. — I have 



— My wife, — but I hate to praise my wife : 
— 'tis as much as decency will allow, to 
praise my daughter. I suppose they will 
return next summer to France. — They 
leave me in a month, to reside at York for 
the winter ; — and I stay at Coxwould uU 
the first of January. 



LETTER CX. 



TO MRS. F- 



Coxwould, Friday 

Dear Madam, 
I return you a thousand thanks for your 
obliging inquiry after me. — I got down last 
summer, very much worn out, — and much 
worse at the end of my journey. — I was 
forced to call at his Grace's house (the 
Archbishop of York) to refresh myself a 
couple of days upon the road near Donca*- 
ter. — Since I got home to quietness, and 
temperance, and good books, and good hours, 
I have mended; and am now very stout; — 
and, in a fortnight's time, shall perhaps be 
as well as you yourself could wish me. — I 
have the pleasure to acquaint you that my 
wife and daughter are arrived from France. 
— I shall be in town to greet my friends b> 
the first of January. — Adieu, dear Madam. 
— Believe me 

Yours, sincerely, 

L. STERN « 
33* 



.190 



LETTERS. 



LETTER CXI. 



TO MRS. H. 



Coxwould, October 12, 1767. 

Ever since my dear H. wrote me word 
she was mine more than ever woman was, 
I have been racking my memory to inform 
me where it was that you and I had that af- 
fair together. — People think that I have had 
many (some in body, some in mind) ; but as 
I told you before, you have had me more 
than any woman ; therefore, you must have 

had me, H , both in mind and in body. — 

Now I cannot recollect where it was, nor 
exactly when: — it could not be the Lady in 
Bond-street, or Grosvenor-street, or 



Square, or Pall-mall. — We shall make it 

out,, H , when we meet ; I emphatically 

long for it ; 'tis no matter ; I cannot now 
stand writing to you to-day : — I will make 
it up next post, — for dinner is upon table ; 

and if I make Lord F stay, he will not 

frank this. — How do you do? Which parts 
of Tristram do you like best? — God bless 
you, 

Yours 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXIL 



TO MR. AND MRS. J. 



Coxwould, November 12, 1767. 



Forgive me, dear Mrs. J , if I am 

troublesome in writing something betwixt 
a letter and a card, to inquire after you and 

my good friend Mr. J , whom 'tis an 

age since I have heard a syllable of. — I 
think so, however ; and never more felt the 
want of a house I esteem so much, as I do 
now, when I can hear tidings of it so sel- 
dom ; — and have nothing to recompense my 
desire of seeing its kind possessors, but the 
hopes before me of doing it by Christmas. 
• —I long sadly to see you, — and my friend 

Mr. J . I am still at Coxwould ; — my 

wife and girl * here. — She is a dear good 



• Mis. Modallc thinks an apology may be necessary 
fur publishing this letter; — the bast she can offer is, — 
Tliat it was written by a fond parent (whose com- 
■amulation she is proud of) to a very sincere friend. 



creature, — affectionate, and most elegant 
in body and mind ; — she is all Heaven could 
give me in a daughter ;— but, like other 
blessings, not given, but lent; for her 
mother loves France ; — and this dear part 
of me must be torn from my arms to follow 
her mother, who seems inclined to establish 
her in France, where she has had many 
advantageous offers. — Do not smile at my 
weakness, when I say I don't wonder at it, 
for she is as accomplished a slut as France 
can produce. — You shall excuse all this ; — 
if you won't, I desire Mr. J — — to be my 
advocate ; — but I know I don't want one. — 
With what, pleasure shall I embrace your 
dear little pledge, — whom I hope to see 
every hour increasing in stature, and in 
favor, both with God and man ! — I kiss all 
your hands with a most devout and friendly 
heart. — No man can wish you more good 
than your meagre friend does; few so- 
much ; — for I am, with infinite cordiality, 
gratitude, and honest affection, 

My dear Mrs. J , 

Your ever faithful 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. My Sentimental Journey will 

please Mrs. S and my Lydia. — I can 

answer for those two. It is a subject which 
works well, and suits the frame of mind I 
have been in for some time past. — I told 
you my design in it was to teach us to love 
the world and our fellow-creatures better 
than we do : — so it runs most upon those 
gentler passions and affections, which aid 
so much to it Adieu ; and may you and 
my worthy friend Mr. J continue ex- 
amples of the doctrine I teach ! 



LETTER CXIII. 

TO MRS. H. 

Coxwould, Nov. 15, 1767. 

Now be a good dear woman, my H , 

and execute these commissions well ; — and 
when I see you, I will give you a kiss : — 
there's for you ! — But I have something else 
for you, which I am fabricating at a great 
rate, and that is my Sentimental Journey, 
which shall make you cry as much as it has 
affected me, — or I will give up the business 



LETTERS, 

of sentimenta. writing-, — and write to the 

body ; — that is, H , what I am doing- in 

writing to you : — but you are a good body, 
which is worth half a score mean souls. 
I am yours, &c. 

L. SHANDY. 



301 



LETTER CXV. 



TO THE EARL OF . 

Coxvvouhl, Noveiiilx;r2S, 176' 



LETTER CXIV. 

TO A. L E, ESa. 

Coxwoukl, Nov. 19, 1767. 

You make yourself unhappy, dear L , 

by imaginary ills, — which you might shun, 
instead of putting yourself in the way of. 
— Would not any man in his senses fly from 
the object he adores, and not waste his 
time and his health in increasing his misery 
by so vain a pursuit? — The idol of your 
heart is one of ten thousand. — The Duke 

of — has long sighed in vain: — and can 

you suppose a woman will listen to you, 
that is proof against titles, stars, and red 

ribands? — Her heart (believe me, L e) 

will not be taken by fine men, or fine 
speeches; — if it should ever feel a prefer- 
ence, it will choose an object for itself; and 
it must be a singular character that can 
make an impression on such a being: — she 
has a Platonic way of thinking, and knows 
love only by name. — The natural reserve 
of her character, which you complain of, 
proceeds not from pride, but from a superi- 
ority of understanding which makes her de- 
spise every man that turns himself into a fool. 
— Take my advice,. and pay your addresses 

to Miss : she esteems you ; and time 

will wear off an attachment which has 
taken so deep a root in your heart. — I pity 
you from my soul ; — but we are all born 
with passions which ebb and flow (else they 
would play the Devil with us) to different 
objects; — and the best advice I can give 

you, L e, is to turn the tide of yours 

another way. — I know not whether I shall 
write again while I stay at Cox would. — I 
am in earnest at my sentimental work, — 
and intend being in town soon after Christ- 
mas. In the mean time, adieu. — Let me 
hear from you, and believe me, dear L., 
Yours, &c. 

L. STERNE, i 



My Lord, 

'Tis with the greatest pleasure I take 
my pen to thank your Lordship for your 
letter of inquiry about Yorick ; — he has 
worn out both his spirits and body with the 
Sentimental Journey : — 'tis true that an 
author must feel himself, or his reader will 
not ; — but I have torn my whole frame into 
pieces by my feelings. — i believe the brain 
stands as much in need of recruiting as the 
body, — therefore I shall set out for town the 
20th of next month, after having recruited 
myself a week at York. I might indeed 
solace myself with my wife (who is come 
from France) but in fact I have long been 
a sentimental being, — whatever your Lord- 
ship may think to the contrary. The world 
has imagined, because I wrote Tristram 
Shandy, that I was myself more Shandean 
than I really ever was. — 'Tis a good-na- 
tured world we live in ; and we are often 
painted in divers colors, according to the 
ideas each one frames in his head. — A very 
agreeable lady arrived three years ago at 
York, in her road to Scarborough. — I had 
the honor of being acquainted with her, and 
was her chaperon. — All the females were 
very inquisitive to know who she was. — 
"Do not tell, ladies; 'tis a mistress my 
'• wife has recommended to me ! — nay, 
" moreover, has sent her from France !" 

I hope my book will please you, my Lord, 
and then my labor will not be totally in 
vain. If it is not thought a chaste book, 
mercy on them that read it, for they must 
have warm imaginations indeed ! — Can your 
Lordship forgive my not making *his a 
longer epistle ? — In short, I can but add this, 
which you already know, that I am, with 
gratitude and friendship, 
My Lord, 

Your obedient, faithful 

L. STERNE. 

If your Lordship is in town in Spring, 1 
should be happy if you became acquainted 
with my friends in Gerrnrd-street : — you 
would esteem the husband, and honor thf* 
wife; — she is the reverse of most of 1<»^ 



392 



LETTERS. 



sex ; — they have various pursuits, — she but 
one , — that of pleasing her husband. 



LETTER CXVI. 

TO HIS EXCELLENCY SIR G. M. 

Coxwould, Dec. 3, 1767. 

My Dear Friend, 

For though you are His Excellency, and 
I still but Parson Yorick, — I still must call 
you so ; — and were you to be next Emperor 
of Russia, I could not write to you, or speak 
of you, under any other relation. — I felici- 
tate you, — I don't say how much, because I 
can't. — I always had something like a kind 
of revelation within me, which pointed out 
this track for you, in which you are so hap- 
pily advanced : — it was not only my wishes 
for you, which were ever ardent enough to 
impose upon a \ isionary brain, but I thought 
I actually saw you just where you now are; 
— and that is just, my dear Macartney, 
where you should be. — I should long, long 
ago, have acknowledged the kindness of a 
letter of yours from Petersburgh ; but hear- 
ing daily accounts you was leaving it, — this 
is the first time, I knew well where, my 
thanks would rind you : — how they will find 
you, I know well ; — that is, the same I ever 
knew you. In three weeks I shall kiss your 
hand ; — and sooner, if I can finish my Sen- 
timental Journey. — The deuce take all sen- 
timents ! — f wish there was not one in the 
world ! — My wife is come to pay me a sen- 
timental visit as far as from Avignon ; — and 
the politesse arising from such a proof of 
her urbanity, has robbed me of a month's 
writing, or T had been in town now. — I am 
going to lie-in, being at Christmas at my 
full reckoning; — and unless what I shall 
bring forth is not pressed to death by these 
devils of printers, I shall have the honor of 
presenting to you a couple of as clean brats 
as ever chaste brain conceived ; — they are 
frolicksome too, mais cela n'empeche pas. 
— I put your name down with many wrong 
and right honorables, knowing you would 
MKe it not well if I did not make myself 
nappy with it. Adieu, my dear friend. 
Believe me yours, &c. 

L. STERNE. 

P. S. If you see Mr Crawford tell him 
Street mm kindly 



LETTER CXVII. 

TO A. L E, ESQ. 

Coxwould, Dec. 7, I7H7 

Dear L., 
I said I would not perhaps write any 
more; but it would be unkind not to reply 
to so interesting a letter as yours. — I am 

certain you may depend upon Lord 's 

promises; — he will take care of you in the 
best manner he can ; and your knowledge 
of the world, and of languages in particular, 
will make you useful in any department. — 
If his Lordship's scheme does not succeed, 
leave the kingdom ; — go to the east, or. the 
west, for travelling would be of infinite 
service to both your body and mind. — But 
more of this when we meet : — now to my 
own affairs. — I have had an offer of ex- 
changing two pieces of preferment I hold 
here, for a living of three hundred and fifty 
pounds a year in Surrey, about thirty miles 
from London, and retaining Coxwould, and 
my prebendaryship ; — the country also is 
sweet ; — but I will not, cannot come to any 
determination, till I have consulted with 
you, and my other friends. — I have great 

offers too in Ireland ; — the Bishops of C 

and R are both my friends ; — but I have 

rejected every proposal, unless Mrs. S 

and my Lydia could accompany me thither. 
— I live for the sake of my girl, and with 
her sweet light burthen in my arms, I could 
get fast up the hill of preferment, if I chose 
it ; — but without my Lydia, if a mitre was 
offered me, it would sit uneasy upon my 

brow. — Mrs. S 's health is insupportable 

in England. — She must return to France; 
and justice and humanity forbid me to op- 
pose it. — I will allow her enough to live 
comfortably, until she can rejoin me. — My 
heart bleeds, L , when I think of part- 
ing with my child ; — 'twill be like the sep- 
aration of soul and body, — and equal to no- 
thing but what passes at that tremendous 
moment ; and like it in one respect, for she 
will be in one kingdom, whilst I am in an- 
other. — You will laugh at my weakness, — 
but I cannot help it; — for she is a dear dis- 
interested girl. — As a proof of it, — when 
she left Coxwould, and I bade her adieu, I 
pulled out my purse and offered her ten 
guineas for her private pleasures: — her an- 
swer was pretty, and affected mf too much * 



LETTERS. 



393 



— • No, my dear papa, our expenses of com- 
1 ing from France may have straitened 
•you; — I would rather put an hundred 
•guineas into your pocket than take ten 
•out of it.' — I burst into tears: — but why 
io I practise on your feelings, — by dwelling 
on a subject that will touch your heart? — 
It is too much melted already by its own 

sufferings, L , for me to add a pang, 

or cause a single sigh. — God bless you ! — I 
shall hope to greet you by New-year's-day 
in perfect health. — Adieu, my dear friend. 
—I am most truly and cordially yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXVIII. 

TO J H — s — , Esa. 

December, 1767. 

Literas vestras lepidissimas, mi conso- 
brine, consobrinis meis omnibus carior, 
accept die Veneris ; scd posta non rediebal 
versus Aquilonem eo die, aliter scripsissem 
prout desiderabas. Nescio quid est materia 
cum me, sed sum fatigatus <$• ccgrotus de 
med uxore plus quam unquam, — <$- sum 
possessus cum diabolo qui pellet me in ur- 
bem, — 6f tu es possessus cum eodem malo 
spiritu qui te tenet in deserto esse tentatum 
ancillis tuis, et perturbatum uxore tud, — 
crede mihi, mi Antoni, quod isthazc non 
est via ad salutem sive hodiernam, sive 
eternam ; num tu incipis cogitare de pecu- 
niae quce, ut ait Sanctus Paulus, est radix 
omnium malorum, <^ non satis dicis hi 
carde tuo, ego Antonius de Castello Infirmo, 
sum jam quadraginta 6f plus annos natus, 
<Sr explevi octavum meum lustrum, et tem- 
pus est me curare, dp meipsum Antonium 
facere hominem felicem <fy liberum, et 
mihimet ipsi henefacere, ut exhortatur 
Solomon, qui dicit quod nihil est melius in 
hdr. vita, quam quod homo vivat festive <Sf 
quod edat el bibat, cjr bono fruatur, quia 
hoc est sua portio <5f dos in hoc mundo. 

Nunc te scire vellemus, quod non debeo 
esse reprehendi pro festinando eundo ad 
Londinum, quia Deus est testis, quod non 
jropero prce gloria, <fy pro me ostendere ; 
nam diabolus iste qui me intravit, non est 
diabolus vanus, aut consobrinus suus Luci- 
fer, — sed est diabolus amabundus, qui non 
2Z 



vult sinere me esse solum ; nam cum nnn 
cumbendo cum uxore med, sum mentula- 
lior quam par est, — <$f sum mortalitcr in 
am are, — ty sum fatuus ; — ergo tu me, mi 
care Antoni, excusabis, quoniam tu fuisti 
in amore, <f per mare <$f per terras 
ivisti <$• festindsfi sicut diabolus eodem te 
propellenle diabolo. Habeo mulla ad te 
scribere, — sed scribo hanc epistolam in 
domo cqffeatarid <Sr plena sociorum strrpi- 
tosorum, qui non permittent me cogitare 
unam cogitationem. 

Saluta amicum Panty meum, cujus lite- 
ris respondebo, — saluta amicos in domo 
Gisbrosensi, <Sf oro, credas me vinculo con- 
sobrinitatis <Sf amoris ad te, mi Antoni, 
devinctissimum, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXIX. 



TO MR. AND MRS. J- 



Yoik, December 23, 1767. 
I was afraid that either Mr. or Mrs. J — , 
or their little blossom, was drooping, or 
that some of you were ill, by not having 
the pleasure of a line from you ; and was 
thinking of writing again to inquire after 
you all, — when I was cast down myself 
with a fever, and bleeding at my lungs=, 
which had confined me to my room norir 
three weeks ; when I had the favor of yours, 
which till to-day I have not been able to 
thank you both kindly for, as I most cor 
dially now do, as well as for all vour pro- 
fessions and proofs of good-will to me. 1 
will not say I have not balanced accounts 
with you in this ; all I know is, that I honor 
and value you more than I do any good 
creatures upon earth ; and that I could not 
wish your happiness, and the success of 
whatever conduces to it, more tnan I do, 
was I your brother: — but, good God! are 
we not all brothers and sisters, who are 
friendly, virtuous, and good? Surely, my 
dear friends, my illness has been a so^t 
of sympathy for your afflictions, upon the 
score of your dear little one. — I am worn 
down to a shadow ;• but, as mv fever h^s 
left me, I set off the latter end of next we** 
with my friend Mr. Hall for town. — T ne^d 
not tell my friends in Gerrard-strt U ' 



394 



LETTERS. 



shall dc myself &te honor to visit them, be- 
fore either Lord or Lord , &c. — 

I thank you, my dear friend, for what you 
6ay so kindly about my daughter: it shows 
your good heart; for as she is a stranger, 
'tis a free gift in you ; but when she is 
known to you, she shall win it fairly : but, 
alas ! when this event is to happen, is in 

the clouds. — Mrs. S has hired a house 

ready furnished at York, till she returns to 
France ; and my Lydia must not leave her. 
What a sad scratch of a letter ! — but I 
am weak, my dear friends, both in body and 
mind; so God bless you! you will see me 
enter like a ghost; so I tell you beforehand 
not to be frightened. — I am, my dear friends, 
with the truest attachment and esteem, 
ever yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXX. 



TO THE SAME. 



Old Bond-street, Jan. ], 1768. 
Not knowing whether the moisture of 
the weather will permit me to give my 
kind friends in Gerrard-street a call this 
morning for five minutes, — I beg leave to 
send them all the good wishes, compliments, 
and respects I owe them. I continue to 
mend ; and doubt not but this, with all other 
evils and uncertainties of life, will end for 
the best. I send all compliments to your 
firesides this Sunday night: — Miss Ascough 
the wise, Miss Pigot the witty, your daugh- 
ter the pretty, and so on. — If Lord O 

is with you, I beg my dear Mrs. J will 

present the inclosed to him ; — 'twill add to 
the millions of obligations I already owe 
you. — I am sorry that I am no subscriber 
to Soho this season ; it deprives me of a 
pleasure worth twice the subscription ; but 
T am just going to send about this quarter 
of the town, to see if it is not too late to 
procure a ticket, undisposed of, from some 
of my Soho friends; and if I can succeed, 
I will either send or wait upon you with it 
by half an hour after three to-morrow: if 
not, my friend will do me the justice to be- 
lieve me truly miserable. — I am half en- 
if-igeu, or more, for dinner on Sunday next; 



but will try to get disengaged, in order *r 
be with my friends. If I cannot, I will gii^r 
like a shadow uninvited to Gerrard-stre^ 
some day this week, that we may eat onr 
bread and meat in love and peace together 
— God bless you both ! I am, with the most 
sincere regard, 

Your ever obliged, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXXI. 

TO THE SAME. 

Old Bond-street, Monday. 

My Dear Friends, 
I have never been a moment at rest since 
I wrote yesterday about this Soho ticket.- 
I have been at the Secretary of State to 
get one; — have been upon one knee tc 

my friends Sir G M , Mr. Las- 

celles, and Mr. Fitzmaurice ; — without 
mentioning five more. — I believe I could as 
soon get you a place at court, for every 
body is going: but I will go out and try a 
new circle; and if you do not hear from 
me by a quarter after three, you may con 
elude I have been unfortunate in my sup- 
plications. — I send you this state of the af- 
fair, lest my silence should make you think 
I had neglected what I promised ; — but no; 
— Mrs. J — knows me better, and would 
never suppose it would be out of the head 
of one who is with so much truth 
Her faithful friend, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXXII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Thursday, Old Bond-street. 

A thousand thanks, and as many ex- 
cuses, my dear friends, for the trouble my 
blunder has given you. By a second note, 
I am astonished I could read Saturday for 
Sunday, or make any mistake in a card 

wrote by Mrs. J s, in which ray friend 

is as unrivalled as in a hundred greater 
excellencies. 

I am now tied down neck and heels 
(twice over) by engagements every day 



LETTERS. 



305 



this week, or most joyfully would have trod 
the old pleasing road from Bond to Gerrard- 
street. — My books will be to be had on 
Thursday, but possibly on Wednesday in 
the afternoon. — I am quite well, but ex- 
hausted with a room full of company every 
morning till dinner. — How do I lament I 
cannot eat my morsel (which is always 
sweet) with such kind friends. The Sun- 
day following I will assuredly wait upon 
you both, and will come a quarter before 
four, that I may have both a little time and 

a little daylight, to see Mrs. J 's picture. 

I beg leave to assure my friends of my 
gratitude for all their favors, with my sen- 
timental thanks for every token of their 
good-will. — Adieu, my dear friends. 
I am truly yours, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXXIII. 



TO DR. EUSTACE, IN AMERICA. 



Sir, 



London, Feb. 9, 1768. 



I this moment received your obliging 
letter, and Shandean piece of sculpture 
along with it: of both which testimonies 
of your regard I have the justest sense, and 
return you, dear Sir, my best thanks and 
acknowledgment. Your walking-stick is 
in no sense more Shandaic than in that of 
its having more handles than one; the par- 
allel breaks only in this, that in using the 
stick, every one will take the handle which 
suits his convenience. In Tristram Shandy, 
the handle is taken which suits the passions, 
their ignorance, or their sensibility. There 
is so little true feeling in the herd of the 
world, that I wish I could have got an act 
of parliament, when the books first appeared, 
that none but wise men should look into 
them. It is too much to write books, and 
find heads to understand them : the world, 
however, seems to come into a better tem- 
per about them, the people of genius here 
being to a man on its side; and the recep- 
tion it has met with in France, Italy, and 
Germany, has engaged one part of the 
world to give it a second reading. The 
other, in order to be on the strongest side, 
has at length agreed to speak well of it 



too. A few hypocrites and Tartu fifes, whose 
approbation could do it nothing but dis- 
honor, remain unconverted. 

I am very proud, Sir, to have had a man 
like you on my side from the beginning 
but it is not in the power of every one to 
taste humor, however he may wish it; it is 
the gift of God ; and, besides, a true feeler 
always brings half the entertainment along 
with him ; his own ideas are only called forth 
by what he reads ; and the vibrations within 
him entirely correspond with those excited 
— Tis like reading himself, and not the 
book. 

In a week's time I shall be delivered of 
two volumes of the Sentimental Travels of 
Mr. Yorick through France and Italy ; but 
alas ! the ship sails three days too soon, and 
I have but to lament it deprives me of the 
pleasure of presenting them to you. 

Believe me, dear Sir, with great thanks 
for the honor you have done me, with true 
esteem, 

Your obliged humble servant, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXXIV. 

TO L. S N, ESQ. 

Old Bond-street, Wednesday. 

Dear Sir, 
Your commendations are very flattering: 
I know no one whose judgment I think 
more highly of; but your partiality for me 
is the only instance in which I can call it 
in question. — Thanks, my good Sir, for the 
prints ; — I am much your debtor for them. 
— If I recover from my ill state of health 
and live to revisit Coxwould this summer, 
I will decorate my study with them, along 
with six beautiful pictures I have already 
of the sculptures on poor Ovid's tomb, which 
were executed on marble at Rome. — It 
grieves one to think such a man should 
have died in exile, who wrote so well on 
the art of love. — Do not think me encroach 
ing if I solicit a favor; — 'tis either to bor 
row, or beg (to beg, if you please) some of 
those touched with chalk which you broughi 
from Italy. — I believe you have throe sets 
and if you can spare the irnporfoct one O* 
cattle on colored paper, 'twill answer W« 



396 



LETTERS. 



purpose, which is namely this, to give a 
friend of ours. — You may be ignorant she 
has a genius for drawing; and whatever 
she excels in she conceals; and her humility 
adds lustre to her accomplishments. — I pre- 
sented her last year with colors, and an 
apparatus for painting, and gave her several 
lessons before I left town. — I wish her to 
follow this art, to be a complete mistress of 
it; and it is singular enough, but not more 
singular than true, that she does not know 
how to make a cow or a sheep, though she 
draws figures anr 1 landscapes perfectly 
well ; which makes me wish her to copy 
from good prints. — If you come to town 
next week, and dine where I am engaged 
next Sunday, call upon me and take me 
with you. — T breakfast with Mr. Beauclerc, 
and am engaged for an hour afterwards 

with Lord O ; so let our meeting be 

either at your house or my lodgings: — do not 
be late, for we vvill go half an hour before 
dinner, to see a picture executed by West, 
most admirably ; — he has caught the char- 
acter of oui friend : — such goodness is 
painted in that face, that when one looks 
at it, let thf. soul be ever so much unhar- 
monized, it is impossible it should remain 
so. — I will send you a set of my books; — 
they will take with the generality: — the 
women will read this book in the parlor, 
and Tristram in the bed-chamber. — Good- 
night, dear Sir ; — I am going to take my 
whey, and then to bed. Believe me 
Yours most truly, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXXV. 

TO MISS STERNE. 

Feb. 20, Old Bond street. 

My Dearest Lydia, 

My Sentimental Journey, you say, is ad- 
mired in York by every one : — and 'tis not 
vanity in me to tell you that it is no less 
admired here : — but what is the gratification 
of my feelings on this occasion ? — The want 
of health bows me down, and vanity harbors 
not in thy father's breast. — This vile in- 
fluenza ! — be not alarmed ! I think I shall 
get the better of it ; — and I shall be with 
you both the first of Mav; and, if I escape, 



'twill not be for a long period, my child, — 
unless a quiet retreat and peace of mind 
can restore me. — The subject of thy letter 
has astonished me. — She could but knjw 
little of my feelings, to tell thee that, under 
the supposition I should survive thy molher, 

I should bequeath thee as a legacy to ! 

No, my Lydia! 'tis a Lady, whose virtues 
I wish thee to imitate, that T shall intrust 
my girl to; I mean that friend whom T 
have so often talked and wrote about. 
From her you will learn to be an affection- 
ate wife, a tender mother, and a sincere 
friend ; — and you cannot be intimate with 
her without her pouring some part of the 
milk of human kindness into your breast, 
which will serve to check the heat of 
your own temper, which you partake in 
a small degree of. — Nor will that amiable 
woman put my Lydia under the painful ne- 
cessity to fly to India for protection whilst it 
is in her power to grant her a more powerful 
one in England. — But I think, my Lydia, 
that thy mother will survive me. Do not 
deject her spirits with thy apprehensions on 
my account. I have sent you a necklace, 
buckles, and the same to your mother. — 
My girl cannot form a wish that is in the 
power of her father, that he will not gratify 
her in ; — and I cannot, in justice, be less 
to thy mother. — I am never alone. — The 
kindness of my friends is ever the same. — 
I wish, though, I had thee to nurse me; 
but I am denied that. — Write to me twice 
a week, at least. — God bless thee, my child, 
and believe me ever, ever, thy 

Affectionate father, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXXVI. 



TO MRS. J. 



Tuesday. 

Your poor friend is scarce able to write; 
he has been at Death's door this week with 
a pleurisy. — I was bled three times on 
Thursday, and blistered on Friday. — The 
physician says I am better. — God knows, 
for I feel myself sadly wrong, and shall, 
if I recover, be a long while of gaining 
strength. — Before I have gone through 
half this letter, I must stop to rest my weak 
hand above a dozen times. — Mr. J was 



LETTERS. 



397 



so good as to call upon me yesterday. I 
felt emotions not to be described at the 
sight of him: and he overjoyed me by talk- 
ing a great deal of you. — Do, dear Mrs. 



into a melancholy which demands my pity. 
— Yes, my friend, our once sprightly and 

vivacious Harriot is that, very object that 
must thrill your soul. — How abandoned ia 



, entreat him to come to-morrow, or, that heart which bulges the teai of mno- 



next day, for perhaps I have not many days 
or hours to live. — I want to ask a favor of 
him, if I find myself worse, — that I shall 
beg of you, if in this wrestling I come off 
conqueror. — My spirits are fled ; — 'tis a bad 
omen. — Do not weep, my dear Lady; — 
your tears are too precious to shed for 
me; — bottle them up, and may the cork 
never be drawn ! — Dearest, kindest, gen- 
tlest, and best of women ! may health, 
peace, and happiness, prove your hand- 
maids ! — If I die, cherish the remembrance 
of me, and forget the follies which you so 
often condemned, — which my heart, not 
my head, betrayed me into. Should my 
child, my Lydia. want a mother, may I hope 
you will (if she is left parentless) take her 
to your bosom ? — You are the only woman 
on earth I can depend upon for such a be- 
nevolent action. — I wrote to her a fortnight 
ago,* and told her what, I trust, she will 

find in you. — Mr. J will be a father to 

her ; — he will protect her from every insult ; 
for he wears a sword which he has served 
his country with, and which he would know 
how to draw out of the scabbard in defence 
of innocence. Commend me to him, as I 
now commend you to that Being who takes 
under his care the good and kind part of 
the world. — Adieu. — All grateful thanks to 

you and Mr. J . 

Your poor affectionate friend, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXXVII. 

TO **********. 

1 beheld her tender look ; — her pa- 
thetic eye petrified my fluids; — the liquid 
dissolution drowned those once-bright orbs ; 
the late sympathetic features, so pleasing in 
their harmony, are now blasted, withered, 
and are dead ; — her charms are dwindled 



* From this circumstance it may be conjectured, 
that this letter was written on Tuesday, the eighth 
vi March, 17b8. ten days before Mr. Sterne died. 



cence, and is the cause, — the fatal cause oj 
overwhelming the spotless soul, and plung 
ing the yet untainted mind into a sea ot 
sorrow and repentance ! — Though born to 
protect the fair, does not man act the part of 
a demon] — first alluring by his temptations, 
and then triumphing in his victory. — When 
villany gets the ascendency, it seldom leaves 
the wretch till it has thoroughly polluted 
him. — T*******, once the joyous companion 
of our juvenile extravagancies, by a deep- 
laid scheme, so far ingratiated himself into 
the good graces of the old man,— that even 
he, with all his penetration and experience 
(of which old folks generally pique them- 
selves) could not perceive his drift, and, 
like the goodness of his own heart, believed 
him honorable ! — Had I known his preten- 
sions, — I would have flown on the wings of 
friendship, — of regard, — of affection, — and 
rescued the lovely innocent from the hands 
of the spoiler. — Be not alarmed at my de- 
claration: — I have been long bound to her 
in the reciprocal bonds of affection ; but it 
is of a more delicate stamp than the gross 
materials Nature has planted in us for pro- 
creation. — I hope ever to retain the idea of 
innocence, and love her still. — I would love 
the whole sex, were they equally deserving. 

taking her by the hand, — the 

other thrown round her waist, — after an in- 
timacy allowing such freedoms, — with a 
look deceitfully pleasing, the villain poured 
out a torrent of protestations, — and, though 
oaths are sacred, — swore with all the forti- 
tude of a conscientious man — the depth of 
his love, — the height of his esteem, — the 
strength of his attachment. — By these, and 
other artful means to answer his abandoned 
purpose (for which, you know, he is but too 
well qualified) — gained on the open inexpe- 
rienced heart of the generous Harriot, and 
robbed her of her brightest jewel. — Oh, 
England ! where are your senators ! — where 
are your laws? — Ye Heavens! where rests 
your deadly thunder? — why are your bolls 
restrained from overwhelming with ven- 
geance this vile seducer! — I, my friend, I 
was the minister sent by justice to revenue 
34 



31)8 



LETTERS. 



her wrongs. — Revenge ! — I disclaim it : — 
to redress her wrongs. — The news of afflic- 
tion flies ; — I heard it, and posted to ****, 
where, forgetting my character, — this is 
the style of the enthusiast, — it most became 
my character, — I saw him in his retreat; — 
I flew out of the chaise, caught him by the 
collar, and, in a tumult of passion, demanded, 
— sure, if anger is excusable, it must be 
when it is excited by a detestation of vice, 
— I demanded him to restore, — alas ! what 
was not in his power to return.— Vengeance ! 
and shall these vermin, these spoilers of the 
fair, these murderers of the mind, lurk and 
creep about in dens, secure to themselves, 
and pillage all around them'? — Distracted 
with my rage, — I charged him with his 
crime, — exploded his baseness,— condemned 
his villany; — while coward-guilt sat on his 
sullen brow, and, like a criminal conscious 
of his deed, tremblingly pronounced his fear. 
— He hoped means might be found for a 
sufficient atonement, — offered a tender of 
his hand as a satisfaction, and a life devoted 
to her service, as a recompense for his 
error. His humiliation struck me ; — 'twas 
the only means he could have contrived to 
assuage my anger. — I hesitated, paused, 
thought, and still must think on so import- 
ant a concern. — Assist me; — I am half 
afraid of trusting my Harriot in the hands 
of a man, whose character I too well know 
to be the antipodes of Harriot. — He is all 
fire and dissipation ; — she all meekness and 
sentiment ! — nor can I think there is any 
hopes of reformation : — the offer proceeds 
more from surprise or fear, than justice and 
sincerity. — The world, the world will ex- 
claim, and my Harriot be a cast-off from 
society ! — Let her ; — I had rather see her 
thus, than miserably linked for life to a 
lump of vice. — She shall retire to some 
corner of the world, and there weep out the 
remainder of her days in sorrow, — forget- 
ting the wretch who has abused her confi- 
dence, but ever remembering the friend who 
consoles her in retirement. — You, my dear 
Charles, shall bear a part with me in the 
delightful task of whispering " peace to 

• those who are in trouble, and healing the 

* broken in spirit." 

Adieu. 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXXVI1I. 

TO THE SAME. 

Sra, 
I feel the weight of obligation which 
your friendship has laid upon me ; and if it 
should never be in my power to make you a 
recompense, I hope you will be recompensed 
at the " resurrection of the just." — I hope, 
Sir, we shall both be found in that cata- 
logue ; and we are encouraged to hope, 
by the example of Abraham's faith, even 
" against hope." — I think there is, at least, 
as much probability of our reaching, and 
rejoicing in the " haven where we would 
" be," as there was of the old patriarch's 
having a child by his old wife. — There is 
not any person, living or dead, whom I have 
so strong a desire to see and converse with 
as yourself: — indeed, I have no inclination 
to visit, or say a syllable to, but a few per- 
sons in this lower vale of vanity and tears, 
beside you ; — but I often derive a peculiar 
satisfaction in conversing with the ancient 
and modern dead, who yet live and speak 
excellently in their works. — My neighbors 
think me often alone ; — and yet, at such 
times, I am in company with more than five 
hundred mutes, — each of whom, at my 
pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by 
dumb signs,— quite as intelligibly as any per- 
son living can do by uttering of words.— They 
always keep the distance from me which I 
direct; — and, with a motion of my hand, I 
can bring them as near to me as I please. — 
I lay hands on fifty of them sometimes in 
an evening, and handle them as I like :— 
they never complain of ill-usage, — and, 
when dismissed from my presence, — though 
ever so abruptly, — take no offence. — Such 
convenience is not to be enjoyed, — nor such 
liberty to be taken, — with the living: — we 
are bound, in point of good manners, to admit 
all our pretended friends when they knock 
for an entrance ; and dispense with all the 
nonsense or impertinence which they bi oach, 
till they think proper to withdraw : mr can 
we take the liberty of humbly and decently 
opposing their sentiments, without exciting 
their disgust, and being in danger of their 
splenetic representation after they ha\e 
left us. 



LETTERS. 



300 



f am weary of talking" to the many, — 
*ho, though quick of hearing 1 , — are so "slow 
u of heart to believe" — propositions which 
are next to self-evident. — You and 1 were 
not cast in one mould, — corporeal compari- 
ron will attest it; — and yet we are fash- 
ioned so much alike, that we may pass for 
twins: — were it possible to take an inven- 
tory of all our sentiments and feelings, — just 
and unjust, — holy and impure, — there would 
appear as little difference between them as 
.here is between instinct and reason, — or, 
wit and madness. The barriers which sepa- 
rate these, — like the real essence of bodies, 
— escape the piercing eye of metaphysics, 
and cannot be pointed out more clearly than 
geometricians define a straight line, which 
is said to have length without breadth. — O 
ye learned anatomical aggregates ! be as 
candid as the sage whom ye pretend to 
revere ; — and tell them that all you know 
is, that you know nothing ! 

1 have a mart to communicate to you 

on different subjects; — my mountain will 
be in labor till I see you, — and then, — what 
then ] — why you must expect to see it bring- 
forth — a mouse ! — I therefore beseech you 
to have a watchful eye to the cats ! — but it 
is said that mice were designed to be killed 
by cats, — cats to be worried by dogs, &c. 
&c. — This may be true; — and I think I am 
made to be killed by my cough, which is a 
perpetua. plague to me. What in the name 
of sound lungs, has my cough to do with 
you, or you with my cough ] 

I am, Sir, with the most perfect affection 
and esteem, 

Your humble servant, 

L. STERNE. 



LETTER CXXIX. 

To * * * *. 

Dear Sir, 
1 have received your kind letter of criti- 
cal, and I will add, of parental advice, which, 
contrary to my natural humor, set me upon 
looking gravely for half a day together: 
sometimes I concluded you had not spoke 
out, but had stronger grounds for your hints 



and cautions than what your frood-nature 
knew how to tell me, especially with re- 
gard to prudence, as a divine; and that you 
thought, in your heart, the vein of humor 
too free for the solemn color of my coat. A 
meditation upon Death had been a more 
suitable trimming to it, I own; hut then it 
could not have been set on by me. Mr. 

F , whom I regard in the c/ass 1 do you. 

as my best of critics and well-wishers, 
preaches daily to me on the same text : 
"Get your preferment first, Lory," he says 
"and then write and welcome." But sup- 
pose preferment is long a-coming, — and, for 
aught I know, I may not be preferred till 
the resurrection of the just; — and all thai 
time in labor, how must I bear my pains ! 
Like pious divines? or, rather, like able 
philosophers, knowing that one passion is 
only to be combated with another ) But to 
be serious (if I can) I will use all reason- 
able caution, — only with this caution along 
with it, not to spoil my book; that is, the 
air and originality of it, which must re- 
semble the author; and I fear it is the 
number of these slighter touches which 
make the resemblance, and identify it from 
all others of the same stamp, which thesi 
uiiderstrapping virtue of Prudence would 
oblige me to strike out. — A very able critic, 
and one of my color too, who has read ovei 
Tristram, made answer, upon my saying 1 
would consider the color of my coat as I cor- 
rected it, — that that idea in my head would 
render my book not worth a groat. — Still I 
promise to be cautious; but deny I have 
gone as far as Swift: he keeps a due dis- 
tance from Rabelais; I keep a due distance 
from him. Swift has said a hundred things 
I durst not say, unless I was Dean of St 
Patrick's. 

I like your caution, ambitiosa rrridrs or- 
namenta. As I revise my book, T will shrive 
my conscience upon that sin ; and whatevei 
ornaments are of that kind, shall be defaced 
without mercy. Ovid is justly censured for 
being ingenii sui amator; and it is a reason- 
able hint to me, as I am not sure I am clear 
of it. To sport too much with your wit, oi 
the game that Wit has pointed out, is sur- 
feiting; like toying with a man's mistress, 
it may be very delightful solacement to 
the enamorato, but little to the bvstander 



400 LETTERS. 

Though I plead guilty to part of the charge,] scribing- silly and trifling events with IV* 
yet it would greatly alleviate the crime, if circumstantial pomp of great ones. Perhaps 
my readers knew how much I have sup- 



pressed of this device. I have burnt more 
wit than I have published, on that very ac- 
count, since I began to avoid the fault I fear 
I may yet have given proofs of. — I will re- 
consider Slop's fall, and my too minute de- 
scription of it; but, in general, I am per- 
suaded that the happiness of the Cervantic 
luinor arises from this very thing : — of de- 



this is overloaded, and I can ease it. — 1 
have a project of getting Tristram put into 
the hands of the Archbishop, if he comes 
down this autumn; which will ease my 
mind of all trouble upon the topic of dis- 
cretion. 

I am, &c. 

L. STERNE 



AN IMPROMPTU 



TO MR. B. 



Sir, 



Exeter, July, 1775. 



This was quite an impromptu of Yorick's 
after he had been thoroughly soused. — He 
drew it up in a few moments, without stop- 
ping his pen. I should be glad to see it in 
your intended collection of Mr. Sterne's 
Memoirs, &c. If you should have a copy of 
it, you will be able to rectify a misapplica 
tion of a term that Mr. Sterne could never 
be guilty of; as one great excellence of his 
writing lies in the most happy choice of 
metaphors and allusions, — such as showed 
his philosophic judgment, at the same time 
that they display his wit and genius ; — but 
it is not for me to comment on, or correct 
so great an original. I should have sent 
this fragment as soon as I saw Mrs. Me- 
dalle's advertisement, had I nut been at a 
distance from my papers. I expect much 
entertainment from this posthumous work 
of a man to whom no one is more indebted 
for amusement and instruction than, 
Sir, 
Your humble servant, 

S. P. 



AN IMPROMPTU. 

No ; — not one farthing would I give for 
guch a coat, in wet weather or dry. — If the 
sun shines, you are sure of being melted 
because it closes so tight about one ; — if it 
rains, it is no more a defence than a cob- 
web ; — a very sieve, o' my conscience, that 
lets through every drop ! and, like many 
other things that are put on only for a 
cover, mortifies you with disappointment, 
3 A 



and makes you curse the imposture, when 
it is too late to avail one's-self of the dis- 
covery. Had I been wise, I should have ex- 
amined the claim. the coat had to the title 
of " Defender of the Body," — before I had 
trusted my body in it. — I should have held 
it up to the light, like other suspicious mat- 
ters, to have seen how much it was likely 
to admit of that which I wanted to keep 
out : — whether it was no more than such a 
frail, flimsy contexture of flesh and blood, 
as I am fated to carry about with me through 
every tract of this dirty world, could have 
comfortably and safely dispensed with in so 
short a journey, — taking into my account 
the chance of spreading trees, — thick hedges 
o'erhanging the road, — with twenty other 
coverts that a man may thrust his head 
under, if he is not violently pushed on by 

that d d stimulus, — you know where, — 

that will not let a man sit still in one place 
for half a minute together; — but, like a 
young nettlesome tit, is eternally on the 
fret, and is for pushing on still farther: — 
or, if the poor scared devil is not haunted 
tantivy by a hue and cry, with gyves and 
a halter dangling before his eyes. — Now, 
in either case, he has not a minute to throw 
away in standing still, but, like King Lear, 
must brave " the peltings of a pitiless 
"storm," and give Heaven leave to "rumble 
" its belly-full, — spit fire, — or spout rain." 
— as spitefully as it pleaseth, without find- 
ing the inclination or the resolution to 
slacken his pace, lest something should be 
lost that might have been gained ; or more 
gotten than he well knows how to get rid 
of. — Now had I acted with as much pru- 
dence as some other good folks, — I could 
name many of them who have been made 
B — ps within my remembrance, for having 
34* 



402 



AN IMPROMPTU. 



oeen hooded and muffled up in a larger! twinklings! — what sparklings as ycu wa,<» 
quantity of this dark drab of mental manu- 
facture than ever fell to my share, — and ab- 
solutely for nothing- else ; as will be seen 
when they are undressed another day. — 
Had I but as much as might have been 
taken out of their cloth, without lessening 
much of the size, or injuring in the least 
the shape, or contracting aught of the 
doublings and foldings, or confining to a 
less circumference the superb sweep of any 
one cloak that any one B — ever wrapt him- 
self up in, — I should never have given this 
coat a place upon my shoulders. I should 
have seen by the light, at one glance, how 
little it would keep out of rain, by how 
little it would keep in of darkness. — This 
a, coat for a rainy day ! Do pray, Madam, 
hold it up to that window. — Did you ever 
see such an illustrious coat since the day 
you could distinguish between a coat and a 
pair of breeches 1 — My Lady did not under- 
stand derivatives, and so she could not see 
quite through my splendid pun. Pope Sixtus 
would have blinded her with the same 
" darkness of excessive light." What a flood 
of it breaks in through this rent! — what 
an irradiation beams through that ! — what 



it before your eyes in the broad face of the 
sun ! — Make a fan out of it for the Ladies, 
to look at their gallants with at church. — 
It has not served me for one purpose ; — it 
will serve them for two. This is coarse 
stuff, — of worse manufacture than the cloth; 
— put it to its proper use, for I love when 
things sort and join well : — make a philtre * 
of it while there is a drop to be extracted. 
— I know but one thing in the world that 
will draw, drain, or suck like it ; and that 
is, neither wool nor flax ; — make, make any 
thing of it but a vile, hypocritical coat for 
me ; — for I never can say sub Jove (what- 
ever Juno might) that " it is a pleasure to 
" he wet." 

L. STERNE. 



* This allusion is improper. A philtre originally 
signifies a love-potion; — and as it is used as a noun 
from the verb philtrate, it must signify a strainer, nut 
a sucker. — Cloth is sometimes used for the purpose of 
draining, by means of its pores or capillary tubes ; but 
its action is contrary to philtration. His meaning ia 
obvious enough ; but as he drew up this fragment 
without stopping his pen, as I was informed, it is no 
wonder he erred in the application of some of hia 
terms 



THE FRAGMENT. 



CHAP. I. 

showing two Things ; first, xohat a Rabe- 
laic Fellow Longinus Rabelaicus is: 
and, secondly, how cavalierly he begins 
his Book. 

JVlY dear and thrice-reverend brethren, as 
well Archbishops and Bishops, as the rest 
of the inferior clergy ! would it not be a 
glorious .thing-, if any man of genius and 
capacity amongst us for such a work, was 
fully bent within himself to sit down imme- 
diately and compose a thorough-stitched 
system of the Kerukopaedia, fairly setting 
forth to the best of his wit and memory, 
and collecting for that purpose all that is 
needful to be known and understood of that 

art] Of what art! cried Panurge. — 

Good God ! answered Longinus (making 
an exclamation, bul taking care at the 
same time to moderate his voice,) why, of 
the art of making all kinds of your theo- 
logical, hebdodomical, rostrummical, hum- 
drummical what-d'ye-call-ems — I will be 
shot, quoth Epistemon, if all this story of 
thine of a roasted horse, is simply no more 

than S Sausages! quoth Panurge. 

Thou hast fallen twelve feet and about five 
inches below the mark, answered Epis- 
temon, for I hold them to be Sermons — 
which said word (as I take the matter) 
being but a word of low degree, for a book 
of high rhetoric — Longinus Rabelaicus 
was fore-minded to usher and lead in his 
dissertation, with as mucb pomp and parade 
as he could afford ; — and for my own part, 
either I know no more of Latin than my 
horse, or the Kerukopaedia is nothing but 
the art of making of 'em. — And why not, 
|uoth Gymnast, of preaching them when | 



we have done? — Believe me, dear souls, 
tiiis is half in half-— and if some skilful 
body would but put us in a way to do this to 
some tune — Thou would'st not have them 
chanted surely? quoth Triboulet, laugh- 
ing. — No, nor canted neither ! quoth Gym- 
nast, crying — But what I mean, my friends, 
says Longinus Rabelaicus (who is cer- 
tainly one of the greatest critics in the 
western world, and as Rabelaic a fellow as 
ever existed) — what I mean, says he, in- 
terrupting them both, and resuming his dis- 
course, is this, that if all the scatter'd rules 
of the Kerukopaedia could be but once 
carefully collected into one code, as thick 
as Panurge's head, and the whole cleanly 
digested — (pooh, says Panurge, who felt 
himself aggrieved) — and bound up, con- 
tinued Longinus, by way of a regular in- 
stitute, and then put into the hands of every 
licensed preacher in Great Britain and Ire- 
land, just before he began to compose, I 
maintain it — T deny it flatly, quoth Panurge 
— What? answered Longinus Rabelaicus 
with all the temper in the world. 



chap. n. 



In which the Reader will begin to form a 
Judgment of what an Historical, Drama- 
tical, Anecdotical, Allegorical, and Com- 
ical Kind of a Work he has got hold of. 

Homenas, who had to preach next Sun- 
day (before God knows whom,) knowing 
nothing at all of the matter — was all this 
while at it as hard as he could drive in the 
very next room : — for, having fouled two 
clean sheets of his own, a'ld being quite 
stuck fast in the entrance upon his thi.ti 



404 THE FRAGMENT. 

general division, and finding himseif unable 
to get either forwards or backwards with 
any grace — " Curse it," says he (thereby 

xcommunicating every mother's son who 
should think differently,) " why may not a 
" man lawfully call in for help in this, as 
** well as any other human emergency?" — 
So without any more argumentation, ex- 
cept starting up and nimming down from 
the top shelf but one, the second volume of 
Clark — though without any felonious in- 
tention in so doing, he had begun to clap 
me in (making a joint first) five whole 
l>ages, nine round paragraphs, and a dozen 
and a half of good thoughts, all of a row ; 
and because there was a confounded high 
gallery — was transcribing it away like a 
little devil. — Now — quoth Homenas to 
himself, " though I hold all this to be fair 
" and square, yet, if I am found out, there 
" will be the deuce and all to pay." — Why 
are the bells ringing backwards, you lad ? 
what is all that crowd about, honest man? 
Homenas was got upon Doctor Clark's 
back, Sir. — And what of that, my lad ? 

Why, an* please you, he has broke his 
neck, and fractured his skull, and befouled 
himself into the bargain, by a fall from the 
pulpit two stories high. Alas! poor Ho- 
menas ! Homenas has done his business ! — 
Homenas will never preach more while 
breath is in his body. — No, faith, I shall 
never again be able to tickle it off as I have 
done. I may sit up whole winter nights 
baking my blood with hectic watchings, 
and write as solid as a father of the church 
— or I may sit down whole summer days, 
evaporating my spirits into the finest 
thoughts, and write as florid as a mother 
of it. — In a word, I may compose myself 
off my legs, and preach till I burst — and 
when I have done, it will be worse than if 
not done at all. — Pray Mr. Such-a-one, who 
held forth last Sunday? Doctor Clark, 
/ trow, says one. Pray what Doctor Clark 1 
says a second. Why, Homenas's Doctor 
Clark, quoth a third. O rare Homenas ! 
criei* a fourth ; your servant, Mr. Homenas, 
quoth a fifth. — 'Twill be all over with me, 
by Heaven — I may as well put the book 
from whence I took it. — Here Homenas 
mrst into a flood of tears, which falling 
down helter-skelter, ding dong, without 
»ny kind of intermission for six minutes 



and almost twenty-five seconds, had a mar 
vellous effect upon his discourse; for the 
aforesaid tears, do you mind, did so tempei 
the wind that was rising upon the aforesaid 
discourse, but falling for the most part per- 
pendicularly, and hitting the spirits at right 
angles, which were mounting horizontally 
all over the surface of his harangue, they 
not only played the devil and all with the 
sublimity — but moreover the said tears, by 
their nitrous quality, did so refrigerate, 
precipitate, and hurry down to the bottom 
of his soul, all the unsavory particles 
which lay fermenting (as you saw) in the 
middle of his conception, that he went on 
in the coolest and chastest style (foi a 
soliloquy, I think) that ever mortal man 
uttered. 

"This is really and truly a very hard 
" case," continued Homenas to himself. — 
Panurge, by the bye, and all the company 
in the next room, hearing all along every 
syllable he spoke : for you must know, that 
notwithstanding Panurge had opened his 
mouth as wide as he could for his blood, in 
order to give a round answer to Longinus 
Rabelaicus's interrogation, which con- 
cluded the last chapter — yet Homenas's 
rhetoric had poured in so like a torrent, 
slapdash through the wainscot amongst 
them, and happening at that uncritical 
crisis when Panurge had just put his ugly 
face into the above-said posture of defence 
— that he stopt short — he did indeed, and, 
though his head was full of matter, and he 
had screwed up every nerve and muscle 
belonging to it, till all cried crack again, 
in order to give a due projectile force to 
what he was going to let fly full in Lon- 
ginus Rabelaicus's teeth, who sat over- 
against him — Yet for all that, he had the 
continence to contain himself, for he stopt 
short, I say, without uttering one word ex- 
cept Z ds. — Many reasons may be as- 
signed for this, but the most true, the most 
strong, the most hydrostatical, and the most 
pnnosophical reason, why Panurge did not 
go on, was — that the fore-mentioned torrent 
did so drown his voice that he had none 
left to go on with. — God help him, poor fel- 
low ! so he stopt short (as I have told you 
before,) and all the time Homenas was 
speaking, he said not another word, good. 
or bad, but stood gaping and staring, like 



what y ju please — so that the break, marked 
thus — which Ilomenas's grief had made in 
the middle of his discourse, which he could 
no more help than he could fly — produced 
no other change in the room where Lon- 
oinus Rabelaicus, Epistemon, Gymnast, 
Triboulet, ajd nine or ten more honest 
blades, had got Kerukopaedizing together, 
but that it gave time to Gymnast to give 
Paaurge a good squashing chuck under 



THE FRAGMENT. 405 

his double chin; which Panuroe taking in 
good part, and just as it was meant by 
Gymnast, he forthwith shut his mouth — 
and gently sitting down upon a stool, thougl 
somewhat eccentrically and out of neigh- 
bors row, but listening as all the rest did 
with might and main, they plainly and dis- 
tinctly heard every syllable of what you 
will find recorded in the very next chapter 



1NTH0DUCTI0N TO THE HISTORY 

OF 

A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT. 



As the following- piece was suppressed 
during the lifetime of Mr. Sterne, and as 
there are some grounds to believe that it 
was not intended by him for publication, an 
apology ma y De deemed necessary for in- 
serting it in the present edition of his works. 
It must be acknowledged, that a mere jeu 
d'esprit relating to a private dispute, which 
could interest only a few, and which was 
intended to divert a small circle of friends, 
was, with great propriety, concealed while 
it might tend to revive departed animosities, 
or give pain to any of the persons who were 
concerned in so trifling a contest. And 
these considerations seem to have had 
weight with those to whom the MS. was 
intrusted, it not having been made public 
until many years after it was written, nor 
until most of the gentlemen mentioned in 
it were dead. After the lapse of more than 
twenty years, it may be presumed that there 



can be no impropriety in giving one of th# 
earliest of Mr. Sterne's bagatelles a place 
among his more important performances. 
The slightest sketches of a genius are too 
valuable to be neglected ; and the present 
edition would be incomplete, if this compo- 
sition, written immediately before Tristram 
Shandy, and which may be considered as 
the precursor of it, was omitted. As the 
whole of it alludes to facts and circumstan- 
ces confined to the city of York, it will be 
necessary to observe, that it was occasioned 
by a controversy between Dr. Fountayne 
and Dr. Topham, in the year 1758, on a 
charge made by the latter against the former, 
of a breach of promise, in withholding from 
him some preferment, which he had reason 
to expect. For the better illustration of 
this little satire, a few notes are added, from 
the pamphlets which appeared while this 
insignificant difference was agitating. 



THE HISTORY 



a soofc toarw SZtotcft^Goatt 



Sir, 

In my last, for want of something better 
to write about, I told you what a world of 
fending and proving we have had of late in 
this village* of ours, about an old cast pair 
of black plush breeches,! which John,"]; our 
parish-clerk, about ten years ago, it seems, 
bad made a promise of to one Trim,§ who 
is our sexton and dog-whipper. — To this 

* York. 

\ The Commissaryship of Pickering and Pockling 
»on. 
t Di John Fountayne, Dean of York. 
f Dt TopMm. 



you write me word, that you have had more 
than either one or two occasions to know a 
great deal of the shifty behavior of the said 
master Trim, — and that you are astonished, 
nor can you for your soul conceive, how so 
worthless a fellow, and so worthless a thing 
into the bargain, could become the occasion 
of so much racket as I have represented. 

Now, though you do not say expressly 
you could wish to hear any more about it, 
yet I see plainly enough I have raised your 
curiosity ; and therefore, from the same mo- 
tive that I slightly mentioned it at all in 
my last letter, I will in this give you a ^ull 



THE HISTORY OF A WATCII-COAT. 



in 



arli! very circumstantial account of the I coat out of it, and you to a jerkin, was the 



whole affair. 

But, befoi i I begin, I must first set you 
right in one very material point, in which 
I have misled you, as to the true cause of all 
this uproar amongst us, — which does not 
take its rise, as T then told you, from the 
affair of the breeches; but, on the contrary, 
the whole affair of the breeches has taken 
its rise from it. — To understand which, 



thing as good again as you represent it. 

It is necessary to inform you, Sir, in tbif* 
place, that the parson was earnestly bent 
to serve Trim in this affair, not only from 
the motive of generosity, which I have just 
ascribed to him, but likewise from another 
motive, and that was by making some sort 
of recompense for a multitude of small ser- 
vices which Trim had occasionally done, 



you must know, that the first beginning 'and indeed was continually doing (as he 



of the squabble was not betwixt John 
the parish-clerk and Trim the sexton, but 
betwixt the parson* of the parish and the 
said master Trim, about an old watch-coat,\ 
that had hung up many years in the church, 
which Trim had set his heart upon ; and 
nothing would serve Trim but he must take 
it home, in order to have it converted into 
a warm under-petticoat for his wife, and a 
jerkin for himself against winter; which, 
in a plaintive tone, he most humbly begged 
nis Reverence would consent to. 

I need not tell you, Sir, who have so often 
felt it, that a principle of strong compassion 
transports a generous mind sometimes be- 
yond what is strictly right; — the parson 
was within an ace of being an honorable 
example of this very crime; for no sooner 
did the distinct words — petticoat, — poor, — 
life, — warm, — winter, strike upon his ear, 
but his heart warmed ; and, before Trim had 
well got to the end of his petition (being a 
gentleman of a frank open temper) he told 
him he was welcome to it with all his heart 
and soul. But Trim, says he, as you see I 
am but just got down to my living, and 
am an utter stranger to all parish-matters, 
knowing nothing about this old watch-coat 
you beg of me, having never seen it in 
my life, and, therefore, cannot be a judge 
whether 'tis fit for such a purpose; or, if 
it is, in truth, know not whether 'tis mine 
to bestow upon you or not, — you must have 
a week or ten days' patience, till I can make 
some inquiries about it ; — and if I find it is 
in my power, I tell you again, man, your 
wife is heartily welcome to an under-petti- 



* Dr. Huttwi, Archbishop of York. 

t A patent place in the gift of the Archbishop, 
which had beeii given to Dr. Topham 1or his life, and 
which in 175s, he solicited to have granted to one of 
his family after his death. 



was much about the house) when his own 
man was out of the way. — For all these 
reasons together, I say, the parson of the 
parish intended to serve Trim in this matter 
to the utmost of his power. All that was 
wanting, was, previously to inquire if any 
one had a claim to it; or whether, as it had 
time immemorial hung up in the church, 
the taking it down might not raise a clamor 
in the parish. These inquiries were the 
things that Trim dreaded in his heart: he 
knew very well, that, if the parson should 
but say one word to the churchwardens 
about it, there would be an end of the 
whole affair. For this, and some other rea- 
sons not necessary to be told you at present, 
Trim was for allowing no time in this mat- 
ter, — but on the contrary, doubled his dili- 
gence and importunity at the vicarage- 
house, — plagued the whole family to death, 
— prest his suit morning, noon, and night, 
and, to shorten my story, teased the poor 
gentleman, who was but in an ill state of 
health, almost out of his life about it. 

You will not wonder when I tell yon, 
that all this hurry and precipitation on the 
side of master Trim, produced its natural 
effect on the side of the parson ; and that 
was, a suspicion that all was not right at 
the bottom. 

He was one evening sitting alone in his 
study, weighing and turning this doubt 
every way in his mind, and, after an hour 
and a half's serious deliberation upon the 
affair, and running over Trim's behavioi 
throughout, he was just saying to himself 
— it must be so, — when a sudden rap at the 
door put an end to his soliloquy, and, in » 
few minutes, to his doubts too, for a laborei 
in the town, who deemed himself past tut- 
fifty-second year, had been returned by me 
constables in the militia-list, and he h»o 



408 

come with a groat in his hand to search the 
parish-register for his age. The parson bid 
the poor fellow put the groat into his pocket, 
and go into the kitchen, — then shutting the 
study-door, and taking down the parish- re- 
gister, — who knows, says he, but I may find 
something here about this self-same watch- 
coat ? He had scarce unclasped the book 
in saying this, when he popped on the very 
thing he wanted, fairly wrote in the first 
page, pasted to the inside of one of the cov- 
ers, whereon was a memorandum about the 
very thing in question, in these express 
words — " Memorandum : The great watch- 
" coat was purchased and given, above two 
" hundred years ago, by the lord of the manor, 
" to this parish-church, to the sole use and be- 
" hoof of the poor sextons thereof, and their 
" successors for ever, to be worn by them re- 
" spectively in winterly cold nights in ring- 
" ing complines, passing-bells, <Src. which 
" the said lord of the manor had done in 
" piety, to keep the poor wretches warm, 
" and for the good of his own soul, for which 
"they were directed to pray," &c. — Just 
Heaven ! said the parson to himself, looking 
upwards, what an escape have I had ! Give 
this for an under-petticoat to Trim's wife ! 
I would not have consented to such a dese- 
cration to be primate of all England ; — 
nay, I would not have disturbed a single 
button of it for all my tythes. 

Scarce were the words out of his mouth, 
when in pops Trim with the whole subject 
of the exclamation under both his arms, — I 
say under both his arms, for he had actually 
got it ript and cut out ready (his own jerkin 
under one arm, and the petticoat under the 
other) in order to carry to the taylor to be 
made up; and had just stepped in, in high 
spirits, to show the parson how cleverly it 
had held out. 

There are many good similies subsist- 
ing in the world, but which I have time 
neither to recollect nor look for, which 
would give you a strong conception of the 
astonishment and honest indignation which 
this unexpected stroke of Trim's impudence 
impressed upon the parson's looks ; — let it 
suffice to say, that it exceeded all fair de- 
scription, — us well as all power of proper 
eseutment, — except this, that Trim was 
ordered, m a stern voice, to lay the bundles 
down upon the table, — to go about his busi- 



THE HISTORY OF 

ness, and wait upon him, at his peril, ths 
next morning, at eleven precisely. — Against 
this hour, like a wise man, the parson had 
sent to desire John the parish-clerk, who 
bore an exceeding good character, as a man 
of truth, and who having, moreover, a pretty 
freehold of about eighteen pounds a year 
in the township, was a leading man in it; 
and, upon the whole, was such a one, of 
whom it might be said, that he rather did 
honor to his office than that his office did 
honor to him ; — him he sends for, with the 
churchwardens, and one of the sidesmen, a 
grave knowing old man, to be present ; — 
for, as Trim had withheld the whole truth 
from the parson touching the watch-coat, he 
thought it probable he would as certainly do 
the same thing to others. Though this, I 
said, was wise, the trouble of the precau- 
tion might have been spared, — because the 
parson's character was unblemished, — and 
he had ever been held by the world in the 
estimation of a man of honor and integrity. 
— Trim's character, on the contrary, was as 
well known, if not in the world, at least in 
all the parish, to be that of a little dirty, 
pimping, pettifogging, ambidextrous fellow, 
— who neither cared what he did or said of 
any, provided he could get a penny by it. 
This might, I said, have made any precau- 
tion needless ; — but you must know, as the 
parson had in a manner but just got. down to 
his living, he dreaded the consequences of 
the least ill-impression on his first entrance 
among his parishioners, which would have 
disabled him from doing them the good he 
wished : — so that, out of regard to his flock, 
more than the necessary care due to him- 
self, — he was resolved not to lie at the mercy 
of what resentment might vent, or malice 
lend an ear to. 

Accordingly the whole matter was re- 
hearsed, from first to last, by the parson, in 
the manner I've told you, in the hearing cf 
John, the parish-clerk, and in the presence 
of Trim. 

Trim had little to sav for himself, except 
"that the parson had absolutely promised 
to befriend him and his wife in the affair, 
to the utmost of his power; that the watch 
coat was certainly in his power, and that 
he might still give it him, if he pleased." 

To this the parson's reply was short, but 
strong: "That nothing was in his power to 



do, but what he could do honestly ; — that, 
in giving the coat to him and his wife, he 
should do a manifest wrong to the next 
sexton, the great watch-coat being the most 
comfortable part of the place ; — that he 
should, moreover, injure the right of his 
own successor, who would be just so 
much a worse patron as the worth of the 
coat amounted to ; and, in a word, he de- 
clared, that his whole intent in promising 
that coat, was charity to Trim, but wrong 
to no man; — that was a reserve, he said, 
made in all cases of this kind : and he de- 
clared solemnly, in verbo sacerdotis, that 
this was his meaning, and was so under- 
stood by Trim himself." 

With the weight of this truth, and the 
great good sense and strong reason which 
accompanied all the parson said on the sub- 
ject, — poor Trim was driven to his last shift, 
and begged he might be suffered to plead 
his right and title to the watch-coat, if not 
by promise, at least by servitude ; — it was 
well known how much he was entitled to 
it upon these scores : That he had blacked 
the parson's shoes without count, and greas- 
ed his boots above fifty times: that he had 
run for eggs in the town upon all occasions, 
— whetted the knives at all hours, catched 
his horse, and rubbed him down : — that, for 
his wife, she had been ready upon all occa- 
sions to char for them ; and neither he nor 
she, to the best of his remembrance, ever 
took a farthing, or any thing beyond a mug 

of ale. To this account of his services, 

he begged leave to add those of his wishes, 
which, he said, had been equally great. — 
He affirmed, and was ready, he said, to make 
it appear, by a number of witnesses, " he 
had drunk his Reverence's health a thou- 
sand times (by the bye, he did not add out 
of the parson's own ale) — that he had not 
only drunk his own health, but wished it, 
and never came to the house but asked his 
man kindly how he did ; that, in particular, 
about half a year ago, when his Reverence 
cut his finger in paring an apple, he went 
half a mile* to ask a cunning woman what 



A WATCH-COAT. 409 

was good to staunch blood ; and actually re- 
turned with a cobweb in his breeches' pocke r 
Nay, says Trim, it was not a fortnight ago, 
when your Reverence took that strong 
purge, that I went to the far end of the 
whole town to borrow you a close-stool, and 
came back, as the neighbors who flouted 
me will all bear witness, with the pan upon 
my head, and never thought it too much." 
Trim concluded this pathetic remonstrance 



with saying, "he hoped his Reverence's 
heart would not suffer him to requite so 
many faithful services by so unkind a return: 
that if it was so, as he was the first, so he 
hoped he should be the last example of a 
man of his condition so treated." — This 
plan of Trim's defence, which Trim had 
put himself upon, could admit of no other 
reply than a general smile. — Upon the 
whole, let me inform you, that all that could 
be said pro and con, on both sides, being 
fairly heard, it was plain that Trim in every 
part of this affair had behaved very ill ; — 
and one thing, which was never expected to 
be known of him, happened, in the course of 
this debate, to come out against him, namely, 
that he had gone and told the parson, before 
lie had ever set foot in his parish,* that John, 
his parish-clerk, his churchwardens, and 
some of the heads of the parish, were a 
parcel of scoundrels. — Upon the upshot, 
Trim was kick'd out of doors, and tola, at 
his peril, never to come there again. 

At first, Trim huff'd and bounceo ^nost 
terribly, — swore he would get a warrant, — 
that nothing would serve him but he would 
call a by-law, and tell the whole parish 
how the parson had misused him ; but cool- 
ing of that, as fearing the parson might 
possibly bind him over to his good behavior, 
and for aught he knew, might send him to 
the house of correction, he lets the parson 
alone, and, to revenge himself, falls foul upon 
the clerk, who has no more to do in the 
quarrel than you or I, — rips up the promise 
of the old — cast pair of black — plush — 
breeches ; and raises an uproar in the town 
about it, notwithstanding it had slept ten 



* In Or. Fountaync's pamphlet, p. 18 and 19, Di 
Topliain ic cliarirc^l with having aflsnred Archbishop 



* " Long before any tiling of my patent was thought 
"of. I rot only most sincerely lamented «hc Arch- 
" bishop's illness, but made it my business lo inquire j Hutton, beforo became into the dioc s ■, that the Deal 
"after every place and remedy that might help his and Chapter of York were a s t o' s'.rangt peopU ■ 
' (iiace in his complaints." Eiiract of a Letter from I and thai he would find it very dijicul', if not impotAV* 
f>» Topham, p. 2u of Dr. Fountaync s Answer. | to live upon good temis with them. 

3B 35 



410 



THE HISTORY OF 



years; — but all this, you must know, is 
looked upon in no other light but as an artful 
stroke of generalship in Trim to raise a dust, 
and cover himself under the disgraceful 
chastisement he has undergone. 

If your curiosity is not yet satisfied, — I 
will now proceed to relate the Battle of the 
Breeches, in the same exact manner I have 
done that of the Watch-Coat. 

Be it known then, that about ten years 
ago, when John was appointed parish-clerk 
of this church, this said Trim took no small 
pains to get into John's good graces, in 
order, as it afterwards appeared, to coax a 
promise out of him of a pair of breeches, 
which John had then by him, of black plush, 
not much the worse for wearing. — Trim 
only begged for God's sake to have them 
bestowed upon him when John should think 
fit to cast them. 

Trim was one of those kind of men who 
loved a bit of finery in his heart ; and would 
rather have a tatterd rag of a better body's, 
than the best plain whole thing his wife 
could spin him. 

John, who was naturally unsuspicious, 
made no more difficulty of promising the 
breeches than the parson had done in prom- 
ising the great coat; and indeed with some- 
thing less reserve, — because the breeches 
were John's own; and he could give them, 
without wrong, to whom he thought fit. 

It happened, I was going to say unluckily, 
but I should rather say most luckily for 
Trim, for he was the only gainer by it, that 
a quarrel, about some six or eight weeks 
after this, broke out betwixt the* late par- 
eon of the parish and John the clerk. Some- 
body (and it was thought to be nobody but 
Trim) had put it into the parson's head, 
" that John's f desk, in the church, was at 
" the least four inches higher than it should 
** be ; — that the thing gave offence, and was 
" indecorous, inasmuch as it approached too 
" near upon a level with the parson's desk 
" itself." — This hardship the parson com- 
plained of loudly ; and told John one day 
after prayers, "he could bear it no longer; 
- and would have it altered, and brought 



* Archbishop Herring. 

t rins alludes to the right of appointing preachers 
toi trie vacant stalls, which Dr. Fountayne. as Dean 
Of V'orJv. claimed against the Archbishop. 



"down as it should be." — John made nc 
other reply, but " that the desk was not of 
"hie raising; — that 'twas not one hair- 
" breadth higher than he found it; — an6 
" that as he found it, so he would leave il 
" In short, he would neither make an en 
•' croachment, neither would he suffer one.' 
— The late parson might have his virtues, 
but the leading part of his character was 
not humility; — so that John's stiffness in 
this point was not likely to reconcile mat- 
ters. This was Trim's harvest. 

After a friendly hint to John to stand his 
ground, away hies Trim to make his mar- 
ket at the vicarage. — What passed there 
I will not say, intending not to be unchari- 
table ; so shall content myself with only 
guessing at it from the sudden change that 
appeared in Trim's dress for the better ; — 
for he had left his old ragged coat, hat, and 
wig, in the stable, and was come forth 
strutting across the churchyard, yclad in a 
good charitable cast coat, large hat, and 
wig, which the parson had just given him. 

"Ho! ho! hollo! John," cries Trim, 

in an insolent bravo, as loud as ever he 
could bawl, — "see here, my lad, how fine 
" I am !" — The more shame for you, an- 
swered John, seriously. — Do you think, 
Trim, says he, such finery, gained by such 
services, becomes you, or can wear well ! 
— Fy upon it, Trim, I could not have ex- 
pected this from you, considering what 
friendship you pretended, and how kind I 
have ever been to you ; how many shillings 
and sixpences I have generously lent you 
in your distresses. — Nay, it was but the 
other day that I promised you these black 

plush breeches I have on. Rot your 

breeches, quoth Trim (for Trim's brain was 
half-turned with his new finery), rot youi 
breeches, says he, — I would not take them 
up were they laid at my door; — give them. 

and be d d to you, to whom you like : — 

I would have you to know, I can have a 
better pair of the parson's any day in the 

week. John told him plainly, as his 

word had once passed him, he had a spirit 
above taking advantage of his insolence, in 
giving them away to another; — but to teU 
him his mind freely, he thought he had go1 
so many favors of that kind, and was »« 
likely to get many more for the same ser- 
vices, of the parson, that he had bette r give 



A WATCH-COAT. 



411 



uj" the ore tones, with good-nature, to some 
one wno would be more thankful for them. 

Here John mentioned Mark * Slender 
(who it seems the day before had asked 
John for them) not knowing they were 

under promise to Trim. "Come, Trim, 

says he, iet poor Mark have them, — you 
know he has not a pair to I is a-—; besides, 
you see he is just of my size, and they will 
fit to a T : whereas, if 1 give 'em to you, 
look ye, they are not worth much; and, 
besides, you could not get your backside 
into them, if you had them, without tearing 
them all to pieces." — Every tittle of this 
was most undoubtedly true; for Trim, you 
must know, by foul-feeding, and playing 
the good-fellow at the parson's, was grown 
somewhat gross about the lower parts, if 
not higher ; so that, as all John said upon 
the occasion was fact, Trim, with much 
ado, and after a hundred hums and hahs, 
at last, out of mere compassion to Mark, 
signs, f seals, and delivers up all right, 
interest, and pretensions whatsoever, in 
and to the said Breeches, thereby bind- 
ing his heirs, executors, administrators, 
and assigns, never more to call the said 
claim in question. — All this renunciation 
was set forth in an ample manner, to be in 
pure pity to Mark's nakedness ; — but the 
secret was, Trim had an eye to, and firmly 
expected in his own mind, the great green 
pul pit-cloth,]: and old velvet cushion, which 
were that year to be taken down; — which, 
by the bye, could he have wheedled John a 
second time, as he had hoped, would have 
made up the loss of the breeches sevenfold. 

Now you must know, this pulpit-cloth 
and cushion were not in John's gift, but in 
the churchwardens',^ &c. However, as I 
said above, that John was a leading man in 
the parish, Trim knew he could help him 
to 'em if he would ; — but John had got a 
surfeit of him, — so when the pulpit-cloth, 



* Dr. Braithwaite. 

t Extract of a letter from Dr. Topham to Di Foun- 
tayne : — " As Dr. Ward lias proposed to resign the 
"jurisdiction of Pickering and Pocklington to Dr. 
" Braithwaite, if you have not any other objection, I 
" shall very readily give up what interest arises to 
" me in these jurisdictions from your friendship and 
" regard,"— P. 5. of Dr Fountayne's Avsicer to Dr. 
Top haw. 

t The Commissaryship of the Dean of York, and the 
Goinmissaryship of the Dean and Chapter of York. 

\ The members of the Chapter. 



&c. were taken down, they were imme 
diately given (John having a great sajj in 

it) to William Doe,* who understood very 
well what use to make of them. 

As for the old breeches, poor Mark lived 
to wear them but a short time; and they 
got into the possession of Lorry Slim,f an 
unlucky wight, by whom they are still 
worn: — in truth, as you will guess, they 
are very thin by this time. 

But Lorry has a light heart; and what 
recommends them to him is this, — That, as 
thin as they are, he krows that Trim, let 
him say what he will to the contrary, still 
envies the possessor of them ; and, with all 
his pride, would be very glad to wear them 
after him. 

Upon this footing have these affairs slept 
quietly for near ten years; — and would 
have slept for ever, but for the unlucky 
kick-bout, which, as I said, has ripp'd this 
squabble up afresh ; so that it was no longer 
ago than last week, that Trim met and in- 
sulted John in the public town-way, before 
a hundred people;! — tax'd him with the 
promise of the old cast pair of black breeches, 
notwithstanding Trim's solemn renuncia- 
tion; — twitted him with the pulpitn 
and velvet cushion ; — as good as told him 
he was ignorant of the common duties of 
his clerkship; adding, very insolently, 
he knew not so much as to give out a com- 
mon psalm in tune. 

John contented himself by giving a plain 
answer to every article that Trim had la id 
to his charge, and appealed to his neigh 
bors, who remembered the whole affair:— 
and, as he knew there was never any thing 
to be got by wrestling with a chimney- 
sweeper, he was going to take his leave of 
Trim for ever. But hold, — the mob by this 
time had got round them, and their high 
mightinesses insisted upon having Trim 
tried upon the spot. 

Trim was accordingly tried ; and after a 
full hearing, was convicted a second time, 
and handled more roughly by one or more 
of them than even at the parson's. 



* Mr. Stables. 

t Mr. Sterne himself. 

J At the Sessions-dinner, where Dr Topham ~harr* 
Dr. Fountayne with the breach of his promise, 
giving the Commissaryship of Pockliiu/tun and Pin 
ering to another person. 



412 



THE HISTORY OF 



— Trim, says one, are you not ashamed 
of yourself, to make all this rout and dis- 
turbance in the town, and set neighbors 
tog-ether by the ears, about an old, — worn- 
out, — pair of cast — breeches, not worth half 
a crown ] Is there a cast coat, or a place 
in the whole town, that will bring- you in 
a shilling, but what you have snapped up 
like a greedy hound as you are 1 

In the first place, are you not sexton and 
dog-whipper,* worth three pounds a year? 
Then you begged the churchwardens to let 
your wife have the washing and darning 
of the church-linen, which brings you in 
thirteen shillings and four-pence: — then 
you have six shillings and eight-pence for 
oiling and winding up the clock ; both paid 
you at Easter : — the pounder's place, which 
is worth forty shillings a year, you have got 
that too: — you are the bailiff, which the 
late parson got you, which brings you in 
forty shillings more. 

Besides all this, you have six pounds a 
year paid you quarterly, for being mole- 
catcher to the parish. — Ay, says the luck- 
less wight above-mentioned (who was stand- 
ing close by him with the plush breeches 
on), "you are not only mole-catcher, Trim, 
" but you catch stray conies too in the dark, 
" and you pretend a license for it ; which, 
" I trow, will be looked into at the next 
"quarter-sessions." — I maintain it, I have 
a license, says Trim, blushing as red as 
scarlet, — I have a license ; and, as I farm 
a warren in the next parish, I will catch 
conies every hour in the night. — You catch 
conies! says a toothless old woman just 
passing by. 

This set the mob a-langhing, and sent 
every man home in perfect good-humor, 
except Trim, wno waddled very slowly off, 
with that kind of inflexible gravity only to 



* •* In the first place, would any one imacine that 

* Dr. Topham, who was now Master of the Faculties, 

• —Commissary to the Archbishop of York,— Official 
"to the Archdeacon of York,— Official to the Arch- 

• deacon of the East Riding,— Official to the Arch- 

* deacon of Cleveland, — Official to the peculiar juris- 
" diction of Howdenshire, — Official to the Precentor, — 
%- Official to the Chancellor of the Oimrch of York, — 
•* and Official to several of the Prebendaries thereof, 
" could accept ur sr> "oor an addition as a Commissary- 
" ihip of fiv; guineas per annum?" — P. S. of Dr 
fhuniayea Answer to Dr. Topham. 



be equalled by one animal in the cieation 
and surpassed by none. 

I am, Sir, 

Yours, &c. &c 



POSTSCRIPT. 



I have broke open my letter to inform 
you, that I missed the opportunity of send- 
ing it by the messenger, who, I expected, 
would have called upon me in his return 
through this village to York ; so it has lain 
a week or ten days by me. — I am not sorry 
for the disappointment, because something 
has since happened, in continuation of this 
affair, which I am thereby enabled to trans- 
mit to you, all under one trouble. 

When I finished the above account, I 
thought (as did every soul in the parish) 
Trim had met with so thorough a rebuff 
from John the parish-clerk, and the town's- 
folks, who all took against him, that Trim 
would be glad to be quiet, and let the mat- 
ter rest. 

But it seems it is not half an hour ago 
since Trim* sallied forth again ; and, having 
borrowed a sow-gelder's horn — with hard 
blowing he got the whole town round him, 
and endeavored to raise a disturbance, and 
fight the whole battle over again ; — alleged, 
That he had been used in the last fray 
worse than the dog ; not by John the par- 
ish-clerk, for I should not, quoth Trim, 
have valued him a rush single hands ; — but 
all the town sided with him ; and twelve 
men in huckram\ set upon me, all at once, 
and kepfc- me in play at sword's-point for 
three hours together. 

Besides, quoth Trim, there were two 
misbegotten knaves in Kendal-green, who 
lay all the while in ambush in John's own 
house; and they, all sixteen, came upon 
my back, and let drive at me all together: 
— a plague, says Trim, of all cowards. 

Trim repeated his story above a dozen 
times, which made some of the neighbors 
pity him, thinking the poor fellow crack- 



* Alluding to Dr. Topham's Reply to Dr. Fountayne'* 
Answer. 

f In Dr. Topham's Reply, he asserts, that Dr Foun- 
tayne's Answer was the child and offspring of munf 
parents, p. 1. 



A WATCH-COAT. 



413 



orain'd, and that he actually believed what 
he said. 

After this Trim dropped the affair of the 
breeches, and began a fresh dispute about 
the reading-desk ; which I told you had oc- 
casioned some small dispute between the 
(ate parson and John some years ago. — 
This reading-desk, as you will observe, 
was but an episode wove into the main 
story by the bye; for the main affair was 
the battle of the breeches and the great 
coat. 

However, Trim being at last driven out 
of these two citadels, — he has seized hold, 
in his retreat, of this reading-desk, with a 
view, as it seems, to take shelter behind it. 

I cannot say but the man has fought it 
out obstinately enough ; and, had his cause 
been good, I should have really pitied him. 
For, when he was driven out of the great 
watch-coat, you see he did not run away. 
No; — he retreated behind the breeches; 
and when he could make nothing of it be- 
hind the breeches, he got behind the read- 
ing-desk. To what other hold Trim will 
next retreat, the politicians of this village 
are not agreed. Some think his next move 
will be towards the rear of the parson's 
boot: but as it is thought he cannot make a 
long stand there, others are of opinion, 
That Trim will once more in his life get 
hold of the parson's horse, and charge upon 
him, or perhaps behind him; but as the 
horse is not easy to be caught, the more 
general opinion is, That, when he is driven 
out of the reading-desk, he will make his 
last retreat in such a manner, as, if possible, 
to gain the close-stool, and defend himself 
behind it to the very last drop. 

If Trim should make this movement, by 
my advice, he should be left, besides his 
citadel, in full possession of the field of bat- 
tle, where 'tis certain he will keep every 
body a league off, and may hop by himself 
till he is weary. Besides, as Trim seems 
bent upon purging himself, and may have 
abundance of foul humors to work off, I 
hink he cannot be better placed. 

But this is all matter of speculation. — 
\ et me carry you back to matter-of-fact. 



and tell you what kind of stand Trim has 
actually made behind thn said dc-sk. — 
"Neighbors and townsmen all, I will be sworn 
before my Lord Mayor, that John and hia 
nineteen men in buckram have abused me 
worse than a dog, for they told you that I 
play'd fast-and-go-loose with the late parson 
and him in that old dispute of theirs about 
the reading-desk ; and that I made matters 
worse between them, and not better." 

Of this charge. Trim declared he was as 
innocent as the child that was unborn ; — 
than he would be book-sworn, he had no 
hand in it. 

He produced a strong witness, and more- 
over insinuated, that John himself, instead 
of being angry for what he had done in it, 
had actually thanked him. — Ay, Trim, says 
the wight in the plush breeches, but that 
was, Trim, the day before John found thee 
out. Besides, Trim, there is nothing in 
that ; for the very year that you was made 
town's pounder, thou knowest well that 
I both thanked thee myself, and moreover 
gave thee a good warm supper for turning 
John Lund's cows and horses out of my 
hard corn-close, which if thou hadst not 
done (as thou told'st me) I should have lost 
my whole crop ; whereas John Lund and 
Thomas Patt, who are both here to testify, 
and are both willing to take their oaths 
on't, that thou thyself wast the very first 
man who set the gate open ; — and after all 
it was not thee, Trim, 'twas the black- 
smith's poor lad who turned them out; — so 
that a man may be thanked and rewarded 
too for a good turn which he never did, nor 
ever did intend. 

Trim could not sustain this unexpected 
stroke — so Trim marched off the field with- 
out colors flying, or his horn sounding, or 
any other ensigns of honor whatever.— 
Whether, after this, Trim intends to rally 
a second time, — or whether he may not 
take it into his head to claim the victory, — 
none but Trim himself can inform you. 

However, the general opinion upon the 
whole is this, That, in three several pitch'd 
battles, Trim has been so trimm\l, as never 
disastrous hero was trimmed before. 



THE END OF STERNE'S WORKS. 



CONTENTS 



OP 



STERNE'S WORKS 



Page 

LIFE OF STERNE UL 

TRISTRAM SHANDY 7 

SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 273 

LETTERS.— 

I. To Miss L 327 

II. To the Same ib. 

III. To the Same 328 

IV. To the Same 329 

V. To Mrs. F— 330 

VI. To Dr. ****** ih. 

VII. To David Garriek, Esq 332 

VIII. To S— C— , Esq 333 

IX. To the same ib. 

X. To Dr. Warburton, Bishop of 

Gloucester 334 

XI. To my Witty Widow, Mrs. F— ib. 
XII To S— C— , Esq . 335 

XIII. To the Same 336 

XIV. To the Same ib. 

XV. To the Same 337 

XVI. To J— H— S— , Esq 338 

XVII. To the Same ib. 

XVIII. To Lady 339 

XIX. To David Garriek, Esq 310 

XX. To Lady D 341 

XXI. To David Garriek, Esq ib. 

XXII. To the Same 342 

XXIII. To Mrs. Sterne, York 343 

XXIV. To the Same ib. 

XXV. To the Same 344 

XXVI. To the Same 345 

XXVII. To the Same ib. 

XXVIII. To Lady D 346 

XXIX. To Mr. E 347 

XXX. To J— H— S— , Esq. . ib. 

XXXI. To Mr. Foley, at Paris 348 

XXXII. To J— H— S— , Esq 349 

XXXIII. To Mr. Foley, at Paris 351 

XXXIV. To the Same ib. 

XXXV. To the Same ib. 

XXXVI. To the Same 352 

XXXVII. To the Same ib. 

XXXVIII. To the Same ib. 

XXXIX. To the Same 353 

XL. To the Same ib. 

XLI. To the Same 354 

XLIJ. To the Same ib. 



XLIII. To the Same ... 354 

XLIV. To the Same 355 

XLV. To Mrs. F— ib. 

XLVI. To Miss Sterne 356 

XLVII. To Mr. Foley . ib. 

XLVI II. To J— II— S— , Esq. . . . 357 

XLIX. To the Same ib. 

L. To Mr. Foley, at Paris . . . . 358 

LI. To the Same ib. 

LII. To J— II— S— , Esq 359 

LIII. To Mr. Foley, at Paris ib. 

LIV. To David Garriek, Esq 360 

LV. To the Same ib. 

LVI. To Mr. Foley 361 

LVII. To Mr. W ib. 

LVIII. To Mr. Foley, at Paris 362 

L1X. To the Same ....*. ib. 

LX. To Mr. Panchaud, at Paris ... 363 

LXI. To the Same ib. 

LXII. To the Same ib. 

LXIII. To the Same ib. 

LXIV. To Miss Sterne 364 

LXV. To J— H— S— , Esq ib. 

LXVI. To Mr. Foley, at Paris 365 

LXVII. To Mr. Panchaud, at Paris .... ib. 

LXVIII. To J— H— S— , Esq ib. 

LXIX. To Mr. Panchaud, at Paris ... 366 

LXX. To Mr. S— ib. 

LXXI. To Mr. Panchaud, at Paris ... 367 

LXXII. To Mr. Foley, at Paris ib. 

LXXIII. To Mr. Panchaud ib. 

LXXIV. From Ignatius Sancho to Mr. 

Sterne 368 

LXXV. From Mr. Sterne to Ignatius 

Sancho ib. 

LXXVI. To Mr. W— 369 

LXXVII. To Mr. Panchaud, at Paris ... 370 

LXXVIII. To Miss Sterne ib 

LXXIX. To Mr. Panchaud, at Paris ... 371 

LXXX. To Eliza ib 

LXXXI. To the Same ib 

LXXXII. To the Same 372 

LXXXIII. To the Same 373 

LXXXIV. To the Same jb, 

LXXXV. To the Same 374 

LXXXVI. To the Same 375 

LXXXV1I. To the Same 376 



41f> 



CCWTENTS. 



LXXXVIIL 

LXXX1X. 

xc. 

XCI. 
XCII. 
XCIII. 
XCIV. 

xcv. 

XCVI. 
XCVII. 
XCVIII. 

XCIX. 

c. 

CI. 

en. 

CHI. 

CIV. 

cv. 

CVI. 
CVII. 
CVIII. 

eix. 

JX. 



Page 

To the Same 377 

To the Same 278 

To Miss Sterne 379 

To Lady P— 380 

To Mr. and Mrs. J— ib. 

To Ignatius Sancho 381 

To the Earl of S— ib. 

To J— D n, Esq 382 

To J— H— S— , Esq ib. 

To A. L e, Esq ib. 

To the Same 383 

To Ignatius Sancho 384 

ib. 

ib. 

385 

ib. 

386 



To Mr. and Mrs. J— . . . . 
To Mr. Panchaud, at Paris 
To Mr. and Mrs. J— . . . . 
To J— H— S— , Esq. . . . 
To Mr. and Mrs. J— . . . . 



To Miss Sterne 387 



To Sir W— 

To the Same 

To Mr. Panchaud, at Paris 
To Mr. and Mrs. J — . . . 
To Mrs. F— 



ib. 
388 

ib. 
389 

ib. 



l'SM 

CXI. To Mrs. H— 390 

CXII. To Mr. and Mrs. J— . . . ,b. 

CXIII. To Mrs. H— ib. 

XIV. To A. L e, Esq 391 

CXV. To the Earl of ib 

CXVI. To his Excellency Sir G. M. . . . 392 

CXVII. To A. L e, Esq. ib. 

CXVIII. To J— H— S— , Esq 393 

CXIX. To Mr. and Mrs J— ib. 

CXX. To the Same 394 

CXXI. To the Same ib. 

CXXII. To the Same ib. 

CXXIII. To Dr. Eustace, in America . . 39ft 

CXXIV. To L. S n, Esq io. 

CXXV. To Miss Sterne 396 

CXXVI. To Mrs. J— ia 

CXXVII. To ********** 397 

CXXVIII. To the Same 393 

CXXIX. To **** 399 



IMPROMPTU . 
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